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TO DISREGARD PHYSICAL COMFORT, TO MEET EMERGENCIES. TO FACE 

DANGER WITH COURAGE AND COOLNESS, TO EXERCISE RESOLUTION 

AND INDEPENDENCE OF SPIRIT—THESE ARE ESSENTIALS TO:A RIDER 
IN THE LAND OF SADDLE-BAGS. 


The 
Land of Saddle-bags 


A Study of the Mountain » 
People of Appalachia 
By 
James Watt Raine 
Head of the Department of English 
Berea College 


Published jointly by 
Council of Women for Home Missions 
and 
Missionary Education Movement of the 
United States and Canada 
New York 


COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY THE 
COUNCIL OF WOMEN FOR HOME MISSIONS 
AND 
MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT 
OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 


Printed in the United States of America 


TO MY FATHER 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/landofsaddlebagsOOrain 


CONTENTS 


Chapter 
1 Introducing Ourselves, 1 


The Spell of the Wilderness, 19 
Adventurers for Freedom, 33 
Elizabethan Virtues, 65 

Mountain Speech and Song, 95 
Moonshine and Feuds, 127 

The Mountains Go to School, 163 

The Religion of a Stalwart People, 191 
Health and Happiness, 207 

Wealth and Welfare, 221 

The Challenge, 241 


NO OO NE Oy PS Oye. ers Sn at 


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ILLUSTRATIONS 


In the Land of Saddle-bags, rrontisrmce 
From a Mountain Top, 4 

A County Seat, 5 

A Windowless Cabin, 52 

Where Rivers and Streams Abound, 53 
Quilts and “‘ Kivers,’’ 68 

Cooperation and Compensation, 69 
When a Road Isn’t a Road, 148 

The Secret of the Future, 149 

A Modern Priscilla, 164 

Five Miles from a Store, 165 

A Meeting at Wildcat Mountain, 212 
Reminders of Elizabethan Days, 213 
The Warp and Woof of Mountam Art, 228 
A Class mm Cheese-making, 229 


PAP ’ 


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PREFACE 


HE Mountain People are the inhabitants of 
the region whimsically, but happily, called 
Appalachia. They are the descendants of 

the Scotch-Irish, driven from the North of Ire- 
land by the stupidity of the Stuart kings. By the 
time the Declaration of Independence was signed 
they constituted one sixth of the population of the 
American colonies. They arrived in such shoals 
that they could not be assimilated by the sparse 
population of the colonies. Being of pioneer 
mettle, they naturally surged beyond the western 
limit of settlements and civilization. There were 
fierce Indians to the west and fiercer French, so 
they turned southward and swarmed down the 
inviting Valley of Virginia, in the heart of the 
mountain region. In this migration they swept 
along with them Palatine Germans, Protestants 
driven out after the Thirty Years’ War, Hugue- 
nots similarly driven out of France, the more 
adventurous Quakers from the western reaches of 
Pennsylvania, and a good sprinkling of Virginia 
English. These latter were the less conservative 
element—the restless young blood, bolder uncon- 
ventional spirits, men rebelling against the routine 
of commerce, some of plebeian and some of gentle 
blood. They preferred the free life of the wilder- 
ness, hunting, trapping, and exploring. From 
these pioneers the Mountain People sprang. 
1X 


Me Preface 


While the rest of the nation has grown far from 
our revolutionary ancestors, the Mountain People 
have been marooned on an island of mountains, 
and have remained very much the same as they 
were at that time. 

Does the area that I have called the Land of 
Saddle-bags cover all this Appalachian region? 
Formerly it did, but not today. 

All sociological progress is the result primarily 
of passable roads. The interchange of products 
and of ideas, and even the infusion of new blood, 
are all contingent upon transportation. Wherever 
the currents of contemporary life can flow in, or 
seep through, all the different human elements 
blend into a composite, in which the characteristics 
are shared in common. Whenever a river is made 
navigable or a railway is built, the adjacent area 
eradually emerges from the Land of Saddle-bags. 

All these survivals from ancestral days are like 
prized heirlooms, with their own quaint atmos- 
phere of dignity and romance. But they are rap- 
idly disappearing. Yet under all changes the fun- 
damental qualities persist. In the colossal task 
of Americanizing America we can wish for noth- 
ing better than these simple virtues of the pioneer, 
who has always been hardy, honest, hospitable, 
and fearless. 


JamES Watt Rainer 


BEREA, KENTUCKY 
January, 1924 


Introducing Ourselves 


Introducing Ourselves 


HE backwoodsmen were Americans 

by birth and parentage, and of 
mixed race; but the dominant strain in 
their blood was that of the Presbyterian 
Irish—the Scotch-Irish as they were 
often called. Full credit has been 
awarded the Roundhead and the Cavalier 
for their leadership in our history; nor 
have we been altogether blind to the 
deeds of the Hollander and the Huguenot; 
but it is doubtful if we have wholly real- 
ized the importance of the part played 
by that stern and virile people... the 
pioneers of our people in their march 
westward. 


THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
The Winning of the West 


CHAPTER ONE 
Introducing Ourselves 


NE infers from the picturesque stories in 
the magazines that the Southern High- 
lander or Appalachian Mountaineer is in 

person tall, hairy, gaunt, and loose, his joints ap- 
parently tied together with bits of string. His 
garments consist usually of trousers and the re- 
mains of a shirt, surmounted by an enormous 
flapping hat. As to occupation, he is represented 
for the most part as sitting rather permanently 
on a rail fence gazing at very intelligent and well- 
dressed visitors; or, more sketchily, running a 
moonshine still; or shooting down his enemies in 
a feud. For which purposes he is picturesquely 
decorated with an old muzzle-loading squirrel rifle 
nearly six feet long, and the powder horn and 
deerskin pouch used by his grandfather. 

Of course I am not personally acquainted with 
all the Mountain People; but for thirty years the 
circle of my acquaintance has been steadily en- 
larging, and this composite picture from the maga- 
zines does not fit very many of them. [ would not 
say that magazine writers have a malicious intent 
to deceive. They are doubtless reasonably honest, 
but they are also temperamentally selective, and 
write with prolific swiftness. Men that habitually 


carry their pencils at half-cock, and are so eagerly 
1 


2 The Land of Saddle-bags 


sensitive to fresh impressions, are naturally star- 
tled when they see the unusual conditions in which 
some of us live, and hear the peculiar names our 
places bear. Who could write a commonplace 
paragraph about a news item from Beefhide, Mad 
Dog, Barefoot, Jamboree, Hogskin Creek, Burn- 
ing Springs (a well of natural gas, discovered in 
early days), Contrary, Poor Fork, Viper, Trav- 
eler’s Rest, Hell fur Sartain, Troublesome, King- 
dom Come, Disputanta, Fish Trap, Squabble 
Creek, Quicksand, Cutskin, Feisty or Hazard? 
These naturally overstimulate the fertile imagina- 
tions of literary men, and the colors of their 
sketches are instinctively heightened; or perhaps, 
by mere natural selection, what is gray and dull 
and average fades out and the residue of color 
‘‘strikes fiery off indeed.’’ 

Perhaps you have read a popular author’s bril- 
hiant little thumb-nail etching called ‘‘Hell for 
Sartain.’’ JI have been on Hell fur Sartain sey- 
eral times myself during Christmas season. Once 
{ was riding alone on the east side of the river, 
which was frozen solid on each bank, but the strong 
current kept it clear of ice in the middle of the 
stream. Meeting a man whose square saddle- 
bags suggested that he was a physician, I said: 

‘‘T suppose I’m on the right road for Hyden?”’ 

‘‘Yes,’’ he replied, and then, stopping his horse, 
he called after me: ‘‘Are you acquainted with the 
fords in the river?’? 


Introducing Ourselves ui 


‘‘Why, I—I’ve been over the road once.’’ 

‘* Well, I reckon maybe you’d as well cross the 
river back here, and shun the quicksand up yon- 
der.”’ 

Would a stranger find more thoughtful courtesy 
in the streets of Chicago or Washington? 

Of course there are plenty of killings in the 
mountains. The doctor was then on his way home 
from attending a young fellow who had been 
‘‘stobbed’’ by another. Such casualties are a 
natural consequence of ‘‘celebrating’’ Christmas. 
This term has a meaning not found in Webster, a 
deliberate intention to drink one’s self into hilari- 
ous and glorious exultation. 

And the day before I had met a dead man on 
the headwaters of Squabble Creek. Some eight 
or ten grim-faced men were walking or riding be- 
side a ‘‘slide’’ where on an armful of cornshucks 
lay the body, a gray blanket spread over it. They 
were taking it back home to his father and mother, 
fifteen miles away. More celebrating! It was 
startling to meet death in this raw and un-hearsed 
fashion. Yet I met a great many men that were 
not dead. | 

On another occasion, it was growing dark, I was 
riding a strange mule, and forded the swollen 
river with some difficulty. Turning up on the far- 
ther shore of the river, I started across lieu fur 
Sartain Creek. I was unable in the dusk to see 
where the road emerged from the creek on the 


4 The Land of Saddle-bags 


opposite side. The mule sank to his belly in the 
quicksand, while I slipped off his back, and, having 
larger feet, waded safely to the bank. After I 
had rescued the mule, I found the path, followed 
it through a cornfield and reached a house. Mak- 
ing a place for me at the roaring fire, the master 
urged me to stay all night, while his wife arose 
quickly to cook me some supper. But it was nec- 
essary to reach the county seat that night, so as 
soon as the moon was up I rose to leave. The host 
called to his fifteen-year-old son to saddle the gray 
mule and guide me back across the dangerous 
creek and the swollen river, and get me safely 
across Baker’s ford, two miles farther up the 
river: ‘‘A man cain’t handily cross thar, less’n 
he knows whar the bottom is.’’ The lad conducted 
me across the three fords and bade me good night, 
adding in response to my hearty thanks—for it 
would have been an insult to offer him money— 
‘Well, ye better go home with me and stay all 
night.’ 

Perhaps you would call that boy ignorant. It 
is true he never saw a railway, or an electric 
hght, or a kitchen sink, or water piped into a 
house. But neither did Shakespeare ever see any 
of these things. Indeed, if Shakespeare could re- 
visit the earth today, he would feel more at home 
among our Mountain People than anywhere else. 
His mother cooked on an open fireplace like ours. 
She used the same spinning wheel; wove her home- 


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Introducing Ourselves B 


spun on the same rough-hewn loom; lighted her 
house with the same grease-lamp, and sang her 
children to sleep with the same old ballads that 
our Mountain women use today. 

Fave you ever thought, when rummaging in an- 
attic, how delightful it would be, by some Alad- 
din’s magic, to visit the home that your great- 
great-grandfather built after he left this Eliza- 
bethan England and came to America? In imag- 
ination you can explore the solid old house with its 
home-built furniture and enjoy the quaint charm 
of pioneer life, long, long past. 

But in our Mountains it is not past. Here we 
are still among Shakespeare’s people. This is the 
real Forest of Arden. From the old log house 
where I live upon the outskirts of this forest, we 
can ride in four hours into the seventeenth 
century. 

After a few miles on the smooth dirt road, the 
hills begin to squeeze closer together, their slopes 
grow steeper, and we turn up Napier’s fork, a 
narrow glen with a stream at the bottom.) The 
sides, now rocky, now park-like, are covered with 
luxuriant foliage to the very top. Our ‘‘road”’ 
runs along the side of the creek, crossing and re- 
crossing it continually, and sometimes, where 
there is no level space on either side, the road runs 
for several hundred yards in the bed of the stream 
itself, thus ‘‘fording it eendwise.’’ In one day’s 
journey you may ford the river a hundred times; 


6 The Land of Saddle-bags 


or you may ‘‘take up’’ a ‘‘branch”’ or ‘‘fork”’ or 
‘‘trace’’ to its source in a spring near the top of 
a ridge, then follow the trail across the ridge, 
through the ‘‘gap,’’ till on the other side you 
come upon another little brooklet, which you fol- 
low down till it empties into a larger stream. 
Then you go up or down its bank till you come to 
‘‘the third left hand holler,’’ and so on—up and 
across and down—all day. /No wonder ‘‘salt gits — 
mighty expensive time hit’s hauled sixty miles.’’ 
And when, on a steep hillside, the path is blocked 
by a fallen tree or a landslide of earth and rocks, 
we must let our horses pick their way through the 
underbrush down to the creek and wade down its 
bed. 

The creek is very steep, it is full of rocks or 
boulders two to three feet high, it is swollen with 
melted snow. Such traveling is certainly inter- 
esting, but neither safe nor comfortable, and prog- 
ress is very slow. The horse gropes for every 
foothold, and you wonder each time whether he 
has found bottom or whether he is stepping on a 
submerged boulder, and will slip two feet deeper 
and perhaps throw you over his head. Going 
down stream, his head is considerably lower than 
his tail, even when he does not slip or stumble. 
After you have succeeded in thus running the 
rapids of the St. Lawrence on horseback, you feel 
rather proud of your horsemanship. It is quite 
different from your well-groomed ride in the park 


Introducing Ourselves ii 


at home. Naturally, when you stop for dinner at 
the mouth of the branch, with ill-concealed elation 
you tell your hostess of this daring ride. But she 
quietly remarks, ‘‘Yes, the road’s a plum sight. 
I went up thar to the store yesterday—hit’s five 
mile back, I reckon you come apast hit. Well, I 
was clean out o’ bakin’ powders, and Susie broke 
my needle—I’m sewin’ her a frock, and I jest had 
to git another—so John slapped the saddle on the 
mare, and I tuk a basket of eggs to do my tradin’ 
with, and them eggs got powerful heavy afore I 
got thar because my baby was restless.”’ 

‘*Your baby! You don’t mean that you carried 
a baby and a basket of eggs up and down that 
stream on a side saddle?”’ 

‘‘Shore,’’ she smiles. ‘‘Well, no, I never brung 
the eggs back, I traded them,’’ she corrected, with 
the usual regard for the exact truth. 

And this ‘ride, which you will remember your 
hfe long as a daring adventure, is her usual 
method of getting her groceries! 

But another surprise awaits us. It rains all 
night, and next morning all the snow is melted 
from the hillsides. ‘‘Is that roar the noise of 
water?’’ ‘‘Yes, sir, they’s a big tide in old 
Greasy; come out and see. Hit’s over the step- 
rock.’’ And sure enough, everything is under 
water to the very door. The volume of water in 
the creek is ten times what it was when we went 
to bed. The water swirls past fiercely, sweeping 


8 The Land of Saddle-bags 


along on its muddy surface logs, tree-tops, some- 
body’s boat, a cow still alive and pitifully moan- 
ing. Our horses could never swim that water, and 
our clothes would be soaked if they could. No 
traveling today! 

Now we begin to realize how important roads 
are to human progress. They are not only chan- 
nels for commerce, but the avenues of education, 
socialization, and civilization. In such weather, 
of course, the children cannot go to school, and in 
this rough country (the adjective refers to geo- 
graphical conditions) there are often more absent 
marks than any other on the school record. In- 
terrupted attendance is fearfully discouraging to 
both teacher and pupil, and it is not strange that 
many pupils drop out altogether when they can 
barely read and write. Only those endowed by a 
propitious fate with the ability to ‘‘take larnin’ 
easy’’ can successfully make such roads a high- 
way to learning. 

Now, we understand why funerals occur in the 
late summer or fall. Of course, burial takes place 
immediately, but there can be no ‘‘funeral’’ until 
the weather is good, and roads ‘‘air fitten to 
travel.’’ Then the kinsfolk and friends can gather 
and the favorite preacher ‘‘kin labor successf’ly 
to honor the appintment.’’ 

It is such conditions of belated travel that some- 
times cause ludicrous complications. Our friend 
Felix lost his wife one winter, and the following 


Introducing Ourselves 9 


fall, when Marthy’s funeral would naturally have 
been preached, her brother was away in Ohio. 
The next year Felix himself was involved at the 
adjoining county seat in a long-drawn-out trial. 
So when the funeral did finally occur, Felix was 
Sitting in the chief mourner’s place with a new 
wife by his side, and as the preacher rose to the 
heights of pathetic eloquence, Felix sobbed upon 
the shoulder of his new wife for the death of 
Marthy. . In such geographic conditions Puck, who 
is not dependent upon good roads, can play his 
mischievous pranks, which make such fools of poor 
mortals. 

With all due respect to modern education, and to 
the invention of printing behind it, with all due 
respect to modern inventions, and to the steam en- 
gine back of them, civilization is primarily de- 
pendent upon good roads. Martin Conway re- 
marks that civilizations have always arisen upon 
the meeting places of ideas. And ideas do not 
meet unless the men who think them can get to- 
gether 

The isolation is even worse for the women than 
for the men. Men take out logs, go to the monthly 
Court at the county seat, drive cattle, and occa- 
sionally go to earn some ‘‘cash money’? at ‘‘pub- 
lic works’’ (by which is meant any enterprise em- 
ploying a number of men, such as building a court- 
house or a bit of railway, work at a sawmill or ata 
coal mine). When there is a house-raising in the 


10 The Land of Saddle-bags 


neighborhood, the women congregate and have a 
quilting. But such gatherings are not very fre- 
quent, and the steep hill slopes rising on all sides 
shut women in to a lonesome life. ‘‘I’d love to git 
to a place once whar I could see a big passel o’ 
land that hadn’t been stood up on edge lke,’’ said 
one woman out of her experience of precipitous 
and imprisoning horizons. Where hills are some- 
what rounded, a ‘‘house-seat’’ is often chosen 
upon one of the knobs. But in the sharper and 
steeper valleys the only place level enough to 
build on is at the edge of the creek, and as there is 
a little larger level where a branch runs into the 
creek, there we usually find the home, with a 
‘‘picketin’ ’’ fence around all the level land. This 
rich silted soil forms the garden. 

The house is probably built of logs, perhaps two 
cribs, one roof extending over both, making a 
covered passageway between, with an outside 
chimney at each end. One crib of logs was built 
first, perhaps without a window, and as the family 
grew the house was enlarged and ‘‘improved’’ by 
building the second crib. A porch overgrown 
with vines or roses runs ali along the front, a 
smoke-house stands near by in the rear, the cave- 
like hole beyond the smoke-house is the family 
coal mine. The barn is across the branch, a log 
crib in the center with shed roofs on all sides. At 
the edge of the branch just outside the picket fence 
is the big iron wash kettle and the ‘‘battling’’ 


Introducing Ourselves 11 


bench for the family laundry. Upon it les the 
batler or batlet such as Shakespeare’s T'’ouchstone 
sentimentally kissed. There are apple trees near 
the house, and perhaps a few peach trees, and 
along one side of the garden paling stand fifteen 
or twenty bee-gums.* 

The ‘‘woman’’—that is, the wife—tends the 
garden after it has been plowed and fitted. She 
raises onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, 
beans, tomatoes, and sometimes squash. She 
raises a few chickens and geese and fattens a few 
hogs. She dries apples and corn and shucky 
beans. The latter she strings with a needle and 
thread, and hangs overhead. She cans tomatoes 
and blackberries, raises a patch of sorghum and 
makes molasses. She barters eggs and honey and 
feathers at the store for sugar, salt, coffee, 
needles, thread, and various feminine trinkets. 
-30me women in the remotest coves have never had 
« dollar in their own hands. Many of them have 
never been more than a few miles away from the 
place where they were ‘‘borned.’’ 

Some of the children make their way out to the 
settlements to work or to school. But those who 
have no ambition for an education or professional 
training are likely to marry young and settle down 
in the woods higher up the creek, where ‘‘his’’ 


1So called because each hive is made from a thirty-inch log 
sawed from a hollow gum tree. These are set on end upon a 
smooth rock or slab, and are covered with split shingles or a 
thin flat stone. 


eae The Land of Saddle-bags 


father gives him land if he will clear it. The wife 
is perhaps sixteen or fifteen or, in an extreme 
case, thirteen. Such a couple has very little money © 
or property to start with. But her mother says, 
‘‘They’re pretty well fixed. He’s got some pota- 
toes and corn and some hay and a nag. And he’s 
got a bed (bedstead) and she’s got a bed (feather 
bed). And he’s been off workin’ at public works 
and got a leetle money for gittin’ some tricks and 
fixin’s for the house. For pore folks that’s a 
right smart to start on.’’ 

Of course, many mountain homes _ have 
‘‘brought-on’’ furniture. Organs are not uncom- 
mon, and even formidable kitchen ranges are 
brought in by some adventurous agent and sold 
at an exorbitant price. One is frequently con- 
fronted by framed family portraits, as lifeless and 
ugly as any in Indiana or Pennsylvania. 

But whether the people are ‘‘jest pore folks”’ or. 
‘‘right prosperous,’’ whether they live on a passa- 
ble road or in the remotest valleys, ‘‘in the head 
of the holler,’’ there is often an air of plenty and 
comfort. Their patriarchal simplicity does not 
mean penury. 

Their free and lavish hospitality is not strained 
or forced. It is the natural expression of open 
minds and generous hearts. It does not depend 
upon how much they have to offer. They are a 
hardy and self-respecting race. None of the men 
considers it a hardship to lie down and sleep wher- 


Introducing Ourselves 18: 


ever night may find him, in a feather bed or in the 
woods. They eat whatever food comes to them 
with the same superiority of mind. I have never 
seen a Mountain man that was a glutton, but have 
often been impressed by their abstemious habits. 
This superiority to mere comfort, this cleanness 
from the temptings of luxury is an inherent char- 
acteristic of the Mountain People. I have never 
known Mountain folk to refuse to extend hospi- 
tality from any false shame at the bareness of 
the fare or the meagerness of the accommodation. 
‘‘We’re pore folks, we hain’t got much, but you’re 
welcome to what there is.’’ ‘‘If you can stand our 
fare, jest he’p yerself.’? And after this no more 
apologies. They have an inherent. self-respect 
which instinctively and unconsciously feels that 
what is good enough for them is good enough for 
an accidental guest. 

I once stayed overnight in a home where the 
mother was in bed in the front room with a week- 
old baby. In the lean-to kitchen at the rear the 
half-grown daughters cooked supper. The table 
was small and would not hold everything they pre- 
pared for us—fried chicken, fried ham, fried eggs, 
potatoes, beans, corn, tomatoes, coffee, sweet milk, 
buttermilk, cornbread, hot biscuit, butter, apple 
preserves, honey and layer apple pie.t. Then the 
eldest girl, constantly swinging a ‘‘fly-bresh,’’— 
a branch from a lilac bush,—kept passing the vari- 


1The progenitor of the strawberry shortcake. 


14 The Land of Saddle-bags 


ous dishes and urging us to ‘‘try to mek out a 
meal.’’ After the men and half-grown boys had 
eaten, the women and children had their supper, 
while we sat on the porch and talked under the 
starry sky. After the dishes were washed, the 
girls and children, bringing the small glass lamp 
without any chimney, climbed up the ladder into 
the loft to sleep. I and the old man who was guid- 
ing me were assigned to the unoccupied bed in the 
front room, while the host lay down with the 
mother and baby. But the baby was restless, and 
the host walked the floor with it and at intervals 
fed it paregoric. Perhaps this situation strikes 
you as funny. It seemed to them quite natural. 
In the Mountains hospitality is a sacred and glad 
duty, no matter in what predicament the family 
may be. This man was patriarchal in his simple, 
pioneer living—patriarchal also in his whole- 
hearted hospitality. 

Nor is this hospitality merely occasional, when 
a chance traveler comes along. Stopping at an- 
other home, I saw the old grandmother cowering 
over the fire in a shawl, as she sat in a low hickory 
splint chair, smoking her pipe. ‘‘How are you, 
Mrs. Browning?’’ ‘‘I ain’t no ’count much. But 
I hain’t no right to complain. I’ve had my health 
for nigh onto sixty years, but now I’m foolish? 
and kind 0’ drinlin’. But all I want in this world’s 
a chance to git to a better.”’ 


1 Frail. 


Introducing Ourselves 15 





When Mrs. Browning was a young woman, with 
only five or six children, word came that a neigh- 
bor woman up the next creek was very sick. Mrs. 
Browning went to her at once. ‘‘Miz Browning, 
I’m a dying woman, and I bin wantin’ mightily to 
see ye. I bin a-watchin’ ye and I’ve noted that 
your perfession and your practice hits,t so. I’m 
goin’ to give ye my six children.’’ As soon as the 
mother died, Mrs. Browning brought the children 
home. It was not even necessary to consult her 
husband. Highteen months later another woman 
died and left her six more orphans, as another 
tribute to her real Christian character. Her hus- 
band’s only remark was, ‘‘ Where ye goin’ to put 
’em all, Bettie?’’ ‘‘Oh, there’s allus room for a 
few more, and the big ’uns can help wait on the 
least ones.’’ She reared them all with her own 
children, and I do not suppose she ever saw a hun- 
dred dollars. Now she is modestly hoping for a 
chance to get to a better world! 


It is time to pause a moment to remark that 
there are just as many different kinds of people in 
the Mountains as there are outside, whether you 
consider them morally, mentally, socially, or finan- 
cially; or consider their skill, energy, disposition, 
or culture. It is practically impossible to make 
any interesting statement that would be true of 

1A term from weaving. Coverlids are woven in strips thirty- 


six inches wide, and two strips are sewed together. Sometimes 
the pattern does not “hit.” 


16 The Land of Saddle-bags 


three million people. What applies to people far 
up the creeks and coves does not apply to those on 
the rich farms along the river bottoms. What is 
true of folk marooned on inaccessible mountain 
tops is not true of folk living in towns with all 
the resources of communication and transporta- 
tion. But, wherever they go and whatever they do, 
the fundamental traits of the Mountain People 
crop out, as do those of Scots, or Jews, or any 
other race. 

The only help I can give toward understanding 
and appreciating these people is to point out the 
traits that are fundamentally and vitally charac- 
teristic. I ask you to note those Anglo-Saxon and 
Anglo-Celtic qualities which you must not ignore 
nor obscure, if you would rightly appreciate the 
Klizabethan simplicity, the power and the man- 
hood of the Mountain People. Accidental cireum- 
stances usually catch the attention of the casual 
observer. But cireumstances are not of dominat- 
ing importance. The important question here, as 
with any people, is, how does the man act in these 
circumstances? Does he master them? or do they 
swamp him? And when he moves into other cir- 
cumstances, does he quickly adjust himself and 
master them too? Such examples of these Moun- 
tain People as Daniel Boone, John Sevier, Patrick 
Henry, Chief-Justice Marshall, and Abraham 
Lincoln forbid a supercilious judgment., 


The Spell of the Wilderness 


The Spell of the Wilderness 





ITHIN the boundaries of this 
territory are included the four 
western counties of Maryland; the Blue 
Ridge, Valley, and Alleghany Ridge coun- 
ties of Virginia; all of West Virginia; 
eastern Tennessee; eastern Kentucky; 
western North Carolina; the four north- 
western counties of South Carolina; 
northern Georgia; and northeastern Ala- 
bama. Our mountain region, of approxi- 
mately 112,000 square miles, embraces an 
area nearly as large as the combined areas 
of New York and New England, and al- 
most equal to that of England, Scotland, 

Ireland, and Wales. 
JoHN C. CAMPBELL 


The Southern Highiander 
and His Homeland 


CHAPTER TWO 
The Spell of the Wilderness 


HE Appalachian Mountain chain extends 
along the Atlantic coast from the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence to the low lying lands on the Gulf 

of Mexico. It is cut almost in half by the two 
rivers—Potomac and Monongahela. The southern 
half of this mountainous country is the home of 
those people variously referred to as ‘‘Southern 
Highlanders,’’ ‘‘Southern Mountaineers,’’ or 
‘‘Appalachian Mountaineers.’’ They usually call 
themselves ‘‘Mountain People.’’ 

Some thirty years ago this sweep of territory 
crossing so many state lines was whimsically but 
happily named ‘‘the State of Appalachia.’’ lt 1s 
about six hundred and fifty miles long and two 
hundred miles wide, being half as large as Ger- 
many or France. Along its eastern edge stretches 
in a northeasterly direction the Blue Ridge Moun- 
tains, while the Cumberlands and Alleghenies 
stretch along its western edge. Between these two 
ranges lies what was often referred to in earlier 
days as the Valley of Virginia, but this central de- 
pression, a Paradise of beauty down which the 
increasing stream of explorers and settlers flowed, 
is really a series of elevated valleys, the most 
famous of which are the Shenandoah and the 


Holston. There are more mountains in Appa- 
19 


20 The Land of Saddle-bags 


lachia, the valleys are deeper and more frequent, 
the surface rougher and the trails steeper than in 
any other section of our country. A journey of 
fifty miles almost anywhere in Appalachia has far 
more ups and downs, and steeper ups and deeper 
downs, than a five-hundred-mile journey across 
the Rocky Mountains. One writer has described 
it as follows: 

‘The Blue Ridge is not especially difficult: only 
eight transverse ridges to climb up and down in 
fourteen miles, and none of them more than two 
thousand feet high from bottom to top. Then, 
thirteen miles across the lower end of the valley a 
curious formation begins. 

‘‘As a foretaste, in the three and a half miles 
crossing Little House and Big House Mountains, 
one ascends twenty-two hundred feet, descends 
fourteen hundred, climbs again sixteen hundred, 
and goes down two thousand feet on the far side. 

‘‘Beyond lie steep and narrow ridges athwart 
the way, paralleling each other like waves at sea. 
Ten distinct mountain chains are scaled and de- 
scended in the next forty miles. There are few 
‘‘leads’’ rising gradually to their crests. Hach 
and every one of these ridges is a Chinese wall 
magnified to altitudes of from a thousand to two 
thousand feet and covered with thicket. The hol- 
lows between them are merely deep troughs.’’? 

F’rom the Atlantic as far west as Montana, Wyo- 

1Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders, p. 20. 


The Spell of the Wilderness 21 


ming, and Colorado there is, outside of Appa- 
lachia only one peak six thousand feet high. It is 
Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. And you 
can count on your fingers all those that are over 
five thousand feet. But in Appalachia there are 
more than forty peaks over six thousand feet, be- 
sides forty miles of unnamed ‘‘saddles’’ or divid- 
ing ridges that attain that altitude. In North 
Carolina alone there are twenty-one peaks higher 
than Mt. Washington; and in the whole of Appa- 
lachia there are nearly three hundred peaks over 
five thousand feet high, besides three hundred 
miles of saddles and ridges. {These mountains of 
Appalachia are crowded so close together that 
there is comparatively little level land. 

While this rough, broken steepness is, perhaps, 
the most noticeable physical feature of the coun- 
try, the second characteristic is unquestionably 
its wonderful growth of forests. Here is the finest 
and largest body of hardwood timber in the United 
States. The mountains are green to their very 
summits, with a thick growth of trees and under- 
brush. There are few bare rocks or naked cliffs. 
And even the peculiar ‘‘bald’’ that is occasionally 
seen on the crown of a mountain is green with an 
excellent natural grass. There are usually many 
shades of green in the great variety of trees; and 
color is a winsome and peculiar quality of the 
landscape. In the spring the delicate tan fluff of 
the beeches, the red flowering of maples, the feath- 


22 The Land of Saddle-bags 


ery white blossoms of the ‘‘sarviss,’’ are succeeded 
by the redbud’s blaze of purple that covers the 
whole hillside, which after a week’s triumph is 
kindled into renewed freshness by the jets of 
white dogwood that flicker through it. 

Higher up the mountain the delicate orange of 
the azalea startles us like tongues of flame, and a 
little later the waxy pink of the laurel, and the 
superb glory of the rhododendron stretches away 
for hundreds of enchanted acres. These have 
scarcely vanished before the coves are golden with 
the blossomy yellow of the chestnut, and we are 
lifted into Elysium by the fascinating fragrance 
of wild grape blossoms. As we climb one of these 
mountains from valley to summit on a summer 
day, we can find successively all the wild flowers 
of the eastern United States in a profusion un- 
known elsewhere. In the fall of the year the au- 
tumn foliage lights up these mountains with a 
many-hued magnificence of color that no other re- 
gion can rival-—while above, in the magic blue- 
ness of a mysterious sky, the ever-burgeoning 
clouds reflect all the silken tintings of the celestial 
hosts. pf 

‘hese marvelous forests are as valuable as they 
are beautiful. They are the virgin forests of the 
new world and contain the finest hardwood tim- 
ber of America. Black walnuts are so plentiful, 
and so easy for the carpenter to work, that they 
have been used very freely, not only for gunstocks 


The Spell of the Wilderness p23 


and furniture, but for common uses. In taking 
down an old barn, built of thirty-foot logs, I found 
walnut logs among them; when I tore up the porch 
floor of my old log house, I found that the planks 
were black walnut; and in repairing old fences, 
we occasionally find a walnut rail. 

White and yellow poplars grow sometimes six 
to nine feet in diameter, and their trunks are sixty 
or seventy feet to the first limb. Chestnuts are 
even thicker, although not so tall. White oaks 
grow to enormous size. Groups of hickory, maple, 
chestnut oak, lynn, beech, birch, and hemlock fill 
the forests. Scattered in infinite variety are syca- 
more, elm, gum, buckeye, basswood, cucumber, 
sourwood, locust, ash, holly, cedar, persimmon, 
and pine. 

A lumber company buys seventy thousand acres 
of forest. It keeps its own railway busy hauling 
out the lumber it cuts. ‘‘It will take twenty-five 
years to cull out all the large timber, and by that 
time there will be another growth ready to cut.’’ 
Perhaps there will, but in most places it looks 
doubtful as one sees the wasteful methods of lum- 
bering, the frequent forest fires, the utter care- 
lessness of the future, the universal callousness to 
the country’s needs in timber, water supply, and 
reforestation. 

_Appalachia, with these wonderful forests, is 
also remarkably well watered. Innumerable 
springs, swelling into ever-present branches, 


24 The Land of Saddle-bags 


creeks, and forks—navigable for the most part 
only on horseback—empty into rather shallow 
rivers. But when these are swollen by ‘‘tides,’’ 
they carry countless rafts and millions of logs to 
the sawmills. As I traveled up one creek, a man 
told me he had ‘‘splashed out’’ thirteen thousand 
logs that season. 

A creek is usuaily too shallow to float logs down 
to the river where they can be assembled into 
rafts. At some suitable place, between high banks, 
a splash dam is built. Square cribs of logs are 
filled with great stones, and a dam is built against 
these anchored piers. In the middle is set an 
enormous gate or door. One side of this pushes 
against two projecting logs in the gateway of the 
dam. The other side is held in place by the trig- 
ger, a long slender log like a telegraph pole, ar- 
ranged on somewhat the same principle as the 
figure ‘‘4”’ trap-triggers that boys set to catch 
rabbits. This dam makes a long and deep lake, 
into which the logs are thrown. 

This done, they wait for a ‘‘tide.’? The most 
sudden tides are the result of heavy rains back in 
the mountains, when there are a few inches of 
snow. Then, overnight, creeks will swell to ten 
times their volume of water and rush down, a 
strong sullen stream. This is the long expected 
moment. The logs that are in the creek-bed or 
on its banks will be quickly carried away. 

When all is ready, the trigger pole will be 


The Spell of the Wilderness 25 


thrown up, the gate released, and the dammed-up 
water, with its freight of logs, will rush through 
the dam with the roar of an avalanche, sweeping 
the logs down to the river. Men work with intense 
energy to roll into the stream those logs that lie 
farther back, so that the oncoming waters may 
carry a continuous current of logs. The feverish 
haste keeps up until the waters of the creek sub- 
side, as rapidly as they rose, and the tide is past. 

In sharp contrast to the frequency of streams is 
the’scarcity of lakes. There are no large lakes in 
the whole region, and very few small ones. Much 
more characteristic of its geography than the pel- 
lucid deeps of mountain lakes are its cascades, 
rapids, and waterfalls. For the most part, the 
streams are swift with rapid and sudden fall. 
A fall of five hundred feet in forty miles is com- 
mon, even in streams of considerable size. In 
small streams, a fall of five hundred feet in a mile 
is not rare. 

In spite of the great rainfall, the absence of 
lakes and ponds and the quick drainage furnished 
by these swift streams, together with the constant 
breezes, reduce the humidity. The climate is mild 
and bracing. While the sun’s rays are hot, one is 
always comfortable in the shade, and a blanket is 
needed at night. 

This network of little streams running down 
every valley determines the avenues of travel, for 
the roads or paths follow the watercourses, You 


26 The Land of Saddle-bags 


‘‘take up’’ a stream for a mile or two, now on one 
bank, now on the other, sometimes in the bed of 
the stream itself, until you come upon its source, 
a spring near the top of the mountain. You go 
on to the top, and on the other side, a few hun- 
dred yards down, you come upon another spring, 
which you follow till it empties into another creek 
or branch. This necessary custom of making the 
paths along the streams accounts for the peculiar 
directions the inquiring traveler receives: ‘‘Ye 
take up the left fork for half a mile, and then hit’s 
the second right-hand holler; ye foller the branch 
till ye come whar ye can mighty nigh see a hay- 
stack on a sort o’ clift above the road. Wa/al, jest 
afore ye kin see that haystack, ye cross the branch 
and go through a patch o’ saxifras and take up 
Peter’s Trace till hit turkey-tails out into a lot o’ 
leetle forks that head up in coves agin the saddle. 
Wa/’al, right thar ye cross the gap, and ye’re on 
the headwaters of Leetle Laurel. Ye’ll find hit’s 
jest six miles.’’ I have forded the Middle Fork 
of the Kentucky River a hundred times in a jour- 
ney of sixteen miles. 

The rapid fall of the streams offers unlimited 
water power which is used on the small creeks to 
turn tub-mills or overshot wheels. On the larger 
streams it is sometimes dammed up and used for 
factories. 

Although there is no coal in the Blue Ridge or 
Hastern Belt, there is more coal in Appalachia 


The Spell of the Wilderness 7 


than in the seven chief coal-producing countries of 
Kurope. As one follows the paths along the 
creeks, coal crops out, often in very thick seams. 
The workable coal area is estimated (by the United 
States Geological Survey) to be about one eighth 
of the total coal area of the United States. It is 
at present supplying nearly one fourth of all the 
bituminous coal. 

Tron is found in such quantities that Appalachia 
ranks second in importance among the iron dis- 
tricts in the amount of ore produced. The juxta- 
position of coal and iron ore in this region, thus 
cutting the time and cost of transportation and 
handling, constitutes a great additional advantage. 

Marble, mica, and asbestos, building stone, kao- 
jin, and fire clay, copper, gold, and corundum are 
profitable mineral resources. 

The Mountain region is suited in soil and climate 
for the production of nearly all the grains and 
fruits of the temperate zone. It grows to perfec- 
tion wheat, barley, oats, corn, sorghum, timothy, 
_ clover, peas, beans, potatoes, asparagus, sweet po- 
tatoes, tomatoes, cabbage, celery, apples, pears, 
peaches, plums, cherries, blueberries, blackberries, 
and strawberries. But the lack of transportation 
is disheartening and discourages improvement and 
production. The market for such stuff is ‘‘a mil- 
lion miles away.’’ The only products worth rais- 
ing (aside from one’s own living) are those that 
can walk to market—cattle, sheep, horses, and tur- 


28 The Land of Saddle-bags 


keys. Large droves of turkeys are driven in the 
autumn fifty or a hundred miles to market. 
Agriculture is often very primitive. What could 
you expect with fields tilted at an angle of forty- 
five degrees? And the farmers in the past have 
had little assistance. The Agricultural Colleges 
of the various states have comparatively few 
Mountain students, and naturally their instruction 
is, for the most part, adapted to the problems pre- 
sented by the characteristics of the farm lands of 
their own state. Most of the agriculturists have 
never even been in the Mountains and would not 
know what to do with a farm steep enough to be 
the hypotenuse of a triangle. It is entirely possi- 
ble for a man to fall out of his cornfield and break 
his neck. I have a field up under the cliff that has 
been in corn for seventy-five years, yet is too steep 
to plow. It is planted and cultivated with the 
hoe. Parts of it are so steep that the only safe 
plan is to hoe the row from the bench up to the 
cliff, then slither down and climb up the next row. 
Sometimes an enterprising man buys a bale of 
heavy wire, fastens one end to a tree on top of the 
mountain, stretches it down, and fastens the other 
end below. He puts pulleys on the wire, from 
which at ‘‘ gathering time’’ he hangs sacks of slip- 
shucked corn and lets them slide down by gravita- 
tion. \When I asked an old man why he preferred 
‘‘cushaws’’ (a large crook-neck squash) to pump- 
kins, he spat reflectively and answered, ‘‘If we 


The Spell of the Wilderness 29 


growed punkins up in yan cove, they’d break loose 
and roll down and kill somebody. So we plant 
cushaws so they kin hook theirselves onto the corn- 
stalks and stay thar.’’ In spite of his turn for 
humor, he did not exaggerate the situation. 

One rainy spell I noticed a great raw area where 
a large landslide had evidently just occurred, and 
as I mentioned it at the house where I stopped for 
dinner, a man recalled with a chuckle a similar 
‘‘ship.’? ‘‘You remember Pete Bolin? Pete were 
a quar-turned, droll-natured feller. Hit were 
rainin’ mightily, and he’d been out drivin’ some 
yearlin’s up under the clifts, and he felt the yarth 
tremble and knowed pint-blank he were on a slip, 
so he throwed his arms around a big sugar-tree, 
and hilt on. Well, boys, the hull side 0’ that moun- 
tain slid down.”’ 

‘‘Trees and all?’ 

‘‘Yes, sirree, them trees is thar today; they 
never did stop growin’. Well, Pete come into the 
house kinder yaller lookin’ and sat down by the 
fire and warmed awhile ’thout sayin’ nothin’. 
Atter awhile he sez, ‘I reckon I have rid a bigger 
eritter than ary one of you fellers ever seed.’ 
‘Why, Pete, have you been a-ridin’ the elephant at 
a circus?’ ‘Naw, sir, hit warn’t no elephant. I 
have rode four acres of land for two hundred 
yards.’ ’’ Such land-slips are no joke. They oc- 
cur every rainy season. But steep areas are, of 
course, not thickly settled. 


30 The Land of Saddle-bags 


In earlier days a settler would locate at the 
mouth of a creek. He would first clear the lower 
levels, then part of the hillsides, not by cutting the 
trees down, but by belting them. He would notch 
a six-inch band around the tree and remove the 
bark therein so that the sap could not go up to 
nourish the tree. In a few weeks the leaves would 
wither and the tree die. A field of such trees is 
called a ‘‘deadening.’’ This is the quickest way 
to make a cornfield. The wood soil, or humus, 
however, is soon washed away from the hillside, 
and the field loses its fertility. Whereupon more 
land is cleared, higher up. 

As the sons of a family marry, they must settle 
higher up the hillsides or farther up the creeks. 
Thus the creeks determine not only the original 
routes of travel, but also the trend of population 
and the development of settlement. 

While this Mountain region covers about one 
third of the area of the nine states mentioned at 
the head of this chapter, in each of them, except 
West Virginia, it constitutes such a small part of 
its state that its population cannot’secure legisla- 
tion suited to their needs. ‘The geographical situa- 
tion has constantly worked against the Mountain 
People, making them dependent politically and 
economically upon majorities who have had no 
interest in their peculiar problems, whose inter- 
ests, indeed, have often naturally worked in an- 
tagonism, 


Adventurers for Freedom 


Adventurers for Freedom 


ETWEEN the years 1632 and 1750, 

numerous groups of Pennsylvanians 
—Germans and Irish largely, with many 
Quakers among them—had been wending 
their way through the Mountain troughs 
and gradually pushing forward the line of 
settlement, until now it had reached the 
upper waters of the Yadkin River, in the 
northwest corner of North Carolina. 
Trials abundant fell to their lot; but the 
soil of the valleys was unusually fertile, 
game was abundant, the climate mild, the 
country beautiful, and life in general 
upon the new frontier, although rough, 
such as to appeal to the borderers as a 
thing desirable. 


REUBEN G. THWAITES 
Daniel Boone 


CHAPTER THREE 
Adventurers for Freedom 


HE Mountain People have not a strong sense 
of history. Even personal traditions are 
vague. ‘‘My foreparents came in through 

Hurricane Gap, date of four (1804). Where did 
they come from? Hit were Virginia they moved 
from, but the McKee generation was Irelandish. 
IT reckon they come from ’cross the water. Granny 
never knowed whar the Carriers come from.’’ 
But the history of these people is written into 
the fabric of America far more indelibly than 
in their memories. Besides documentary evidence, 
we have abundant testimony in their family names, 
their language, their customs, their traditions, 
their characteristics, and their ballads. All these 
elements have a Shakespearean flavor and take us 
back to the ‘‘spacious times of Great Elizabeth.’’ 
Then, Englishmen stimulated by the strong wine 
of the Renaissance were all eager ‘‘to seek beyond 
the sunset for the Western Isles.’’ 

These voyages of romantic exploration and rest- 
less adventure opened the way for more sober and 
permanent efforts. As soon as trading posts were 
established, large masses of folk who lived under 
intolerable pressure in various countries turned 
their thoughts to these new lands as places of 


refuge from their oppression. By a natural proc- 
33 


34 The Land of Saddle-bags 


ess of selection, successful colonists must be re- 
sourceful, powerful, and self-controlled. It is one 
thing to go into the woods for a week’s picnic; it 
is vastly different to go into the wilderness for the 
rest of one’s life. People who do this must be sus- 
tained by a great purpose. This purpose has 
usually been to achieve freedom, and frequently 
religious freedom. The Huguenots from France, 
the Dunkers, Mennonites, and Moravians from 
Holland and Germany, the Puritans, Quakers, and 
Catholics from England, together with Scots (es- 
pecially from the north of Ireland) landed all 
along the Atlantic coast. They gave up home, 
property, even civilization, that they might be free. 

Political refugees there were also: Cromwellians 
fleeing from the vengeance of Charles II; Scottish 
Highlanders loyal to the Stuarts, fleeing from 
King George; Germans from the Palatine States 
fleeing from the petty princelings whose voracious 
taxation would finish the awful desolation of the 
Thirty Years’ War. These, so widely different in 
race, religion, and social rank, were all seeking 
freedom, and there was, therefore, in them all an 
underlying similarity, a strong basis for union. ) 
Even those that came for trading and the hope of 
gain, af they remained and established homes, en- 
tered into the liberty-loving spirit, and readily 
coalesced with the other settlers, until they were 
more or less completely fused with them. 

All the early settlers were perforce pioneers; 


Adventurers for Freedom 35 


and in general new settlers, not having property 
interests or established professional positions, 
drifted out on the edges of previous settlements 
to find or make a place for themselves. The more 
energetic and independent they were, the less 
likely would they be to become laborers or under- 
lings in projects already under way in the settle- 
ments. ‘Thus the most resourceful of the newcom- 
ers tended always to settle deeper and deeper in 
the wilderness. Only such could maintain them- 
selves in the arduous struggle with primitive con- 
ditions, hard fare, and the constant danger from 
forest life and Indians. As a community acquired 
the comforts and luxuries of urban society, the 
bolder spirits of the younger generation tended 
naturally to join the drift to the more adventurous 
outskirts and become hunters, trappers, and 
pioneers. | 

There was thus a continuous movement of popu- 
lation to unoccupied lands on the west, stimulated 
or retarded by local circeumstances—such as In- 
dian attacks, crop shortage, governmental inter- 
ference, or unusual influx of immigrants. These 
conditions applied to all the settlements in all the 
colonies, and must be remembered as the back- 
ground for the great movement of population that 
settled the Mountain region. 

To understand this sudden and voluminous 
movement, we must go back to the English inva- 
sions of Ireland. Again and again English kings 


36 The Land of Saddle-bags 


‘‘planted’’? large numbers of colonists in Ireland 
after killing or driving out the previous residents. 
So that ‘‘the Irish’’ in many districts were largely 
of English blood, and they resented each new in- 
vasion with as much vigor and hatred as did their 
more Celtic neighbors. Queen Elizabeth took her 
turn in donating Irish lands to courtly favorites 
if they would ‘‘pacify’’ the districts. This they 
proceeded to do by war and famine. Three gen- 
eral attempts to ‘‘plant’’ colonists wholesale upon 
these sequestered lands failed, because the pacified 
Irish made it too uncomfortable for the new- 
comers. Shortly after Klizabeth’s death, however, 
James I succeeded in making a ‘‘plantation’’ in 
Ulster by inducing the hardier, ruggeder, and 
stubborner Scots to settle there in great numbers. 
These transplanted Scots are called by American 
historians Scotch-Irish. In 1610 the land was off- 
cially opened for settlers, and permanent com- 
munities were soon established. <A little later four 
thousand followed in one emigration, and at the 
close of the Stuart reigns in 1688 there were fifty 
thousand Scots in Ulster, and fifty thousand addi- 
tional families settled there in the two or three 
years succeeding. But their situation was never 
comfortable. The dispossessed Irish were hostile, 
and the English government, after getting the 
Scots there for its own schemes, instead of assist- 
ing them, constantly annoyed them by restrictions 
and exactions. 


Adventurers for Freedom on 


One would think that the English government 
would have favored these Scotch Presbyterians 
who were their instrument for repressing the up- 
risings of the Irish Catholics; but the Stuart kings, 
always besotted with the ambition for autocratic 
rule, badgered and irritated their Presbyterian 
‘‘nlantations’’ even more unbearably than they 
treated the Catholics. No Irish ships were al- 
lowed to engage in foreign trade—not even in 
trade with America. The people were not allowed 
to worship except in the State churches. The gov- 
ernment prohibited them from exporting horses, 
cattle, or dairy products to England. This selfish 
and greedy blow followed a generous gift from 
Ireland of thirty thousand head of cattle towards 
the relief of London after the Great Fire. As a 
consequence of this tyrannical legislation, the 
value of cattle fell fivefold, and horses were worth 
only one twentieth of what they had been. After 
years of struggle under these handicaps, Ireland 
began to thrive on wool. Promptly the English 
government forbade the export of wool to any 
country except Kingland, and even to England it 
could be admitted only under prohibitive duties. 
Then Ireland tried linen, but as soon as it grew 
general enough to become profitable, the English 
government, egged on by the London merchants, 
killed the linen industry also. The persecution 
of Presbyterians became more and more severe. 
They were forbidden to possess arms. They were 


38 The Land of Saddle-bags 


expelled even from the militia. They were fined 
incessantly. After paying cess, tithes, and rent, 
they had left for themselves only about one fourth 
or one fifth of the results of their labor. If their 
ministers solemnized marriages, the children were 
declared illegitimate and could not inherit prop- 
erty. 

So they began as early as 1635 to emigrate to 
America, and after the terrible massacres in 1641 
they left in increasing numbers. In 1649 Lord 
Baltimore offered to give any ‘‘adventurer’’ or 
‘‘pnlanter’’ three thousand acres for every thirty 
persons brought into Maryland. Large numbers 
of Scotch-Irish thereupon settled there ‘‘with free 
liberty of religion.’’ But Pennsylvania, with its 
genuine religious liberty and its hearty democratic 
welcome, soon became the star of hope for the op- 
pressed, and far more Scotch-Irish settled in 
Pennsylvania than in all the other colonies com- 
bined. 

To crown all, about 1717, when the leases of 
most of the farms in County Antrim expired, the 
rents were doubled and trebled by Lord Donegal. 
These farms had been waste lands until they were 
cleared and improved by the unpaid labor of the 
Scots who settled upon them. To raise three times 
as much rent money on the lands their own toil 
had made fertile was financially impossible, even 
if their indignation had permitted the attempt. 
Within two years after the Antrim Evictions, 


Adventurers for Freedom 89 


thirty thousand more Protestants left Ulster for 
America. Soon they were sailing at the rate of 
twelve thousand a year, and by 1774 there were 
three hundred thousand of them in Pennsylvania 
alone, and two hundred thousand settled in other 
parts of America. Fiske estimates that they con- 
stituted at that time one sixth of the total popula- 
tion of the colonies. 

They found the fertile and accessible lands of 
Kastern Pennsylvania already occupied. So they 
traveled farther west, beyond the settlements, and 
built their cabins in the unbroken forest, each suc- 
cessive emigration going beyond the last, a little 
farther west. The Penns, as Proprietors, had re- 
served great tracts of land for themselves, fifteen 
thousand acres in Conestoga, forty thousand acres 
at Gettysburg, three hundred thousand sold to 
English absentees. But the incoming tide of 
Scotch-Irish could not be held off. Logan, the Sec- 
retary of Pennsylvania, writes in 1730 that the 
Scotch-Irish in an ‘‘audacious and disorderly man- 
ner’’ settled upon these tracts, saying it ‘‘was 
against the laws of God and Nature that so much 
land should be idle while so many Christians 
wanted it to labor on and to raise their bread.’’ 
Consequently the Proprietors had to sell it to 
them, which they did for nominal sums. 

It was a racial characteristic that the Scotch- 
Irish were opposed to paying any rent, however 
small. Their cruel experience in Ulster had 


40 The Land of Saddle-bags 


taught them that they might lose all their life’s 
labor on rented land, so they felt at ease only when 
they owned it themselves. This characteristic per- 
sists to this day. A Mountain man recently re- 
marked, ‘‘I hain’t a-goin’ to rent; I’ll own some 
land if hit’s only a house-seat.’’? Before the in- 
flux of immigrants just mentioned the Scotch- 
Irish in Pennsylvania had already forced the Pro- 
prietors to abolish the system of quit-rents, the 
annual payment of a few cents an acre (a device 
of the ‘‘ Proprietors’’ to keep a legal hold upon the 
land). This exemption was not made general, but 
was granted to the Scotch-Irish on the ground that 
they formed a barrier and a defense against the 
Indians. 

They were a peaceable folk—many of them hav- 
ing left New England to escape Indian attacks— 
but when forced to fight, they did it thoroughly, 
with a ferocity as bloody as that of the Indians, 
and a stubbornness that finally conquered the 
enemy. After living a hundred years among the 
hardships and hostilities of Ulster, nothing could 
daunt them. 

In addition to the great swarms of Scotch-Irish 
that settled in Pennsylvania, large numbers set- 
tled all along the coast, but especially in Maryland 
and Carolina. Finding here, as elsewhere, the 
coast lands already occupied, they drifted to the 
western fringes of settlement. So in the western 
part of what is now North and South Carolina, in 


Adventurers for Freedom 41 


the foothills east of the Blue Ridge, there gathered 
another large mass of pioneer population, ready 
later to be drawn into the great stream that flowed 
down the Valley of Virginia to form the Mountain 
People. 

Nobody knows, of course, when the first settlers 
entered the beautiful and fertile Shenandoah Val- 
ley, which is the first of that chain of delightful 
upland river bottoms that together form the Val- 
ley of Virginia. Alexander Breckinridge from 
Ulster was comfortably settled there in 1728, 
though he was swept on later by the migrating 
flood that finally carried him to Kentucky. About 
1732 John Lewis, with his Scottish wife, founded 
Staunton. This same year a German, or more 
probably an Alsatian Frenchman from Strass- 
burg, secured a warrant for forty thousand acres 
for himself and fifteen other families. His name, 
as spelled by the pioneers, was Joist Hite. These 
people settled in the Valley near the present site 
of Winchester, Virginia. Among them were 
George Bowman, Peter Stephens, Paul Froman 
(sons-in-law of Joist Hite), Jacob Chrisman, 
Robert McKay, Robert Green, and William Duff. 

During the next few years, encouraged by these 
beginnings, the migration became a constant and 
ever-increasing stream. In 1737 we find in Rock- 
bridge County strong settlements of Scotch-Irish, 
bearing such names as Greenlee, Alexander, Pax- 
ton, Lyle, Grigsby, Brown, Matthews, Caruthers, 


42 The Land of Saddle-bags 


Telford, Stuart, Crawford, Wilson, Cummins, 
Campbell, McCampbell, McClung, McKee, and Mc- 
Cuen. Next year each family entering the Valley 
of Virginia could secure a grant of a thousand 
acres. By 1740 the Scotch-Irish had settled so 
thickly around Staunton—the first settler had been 
there only eight years—that they sent for the Rev. 
John Craig, who became their settled pastor. And 
two years later there were enough Germans in the 
Valley so that itinerant Moravian missionaries 
made more or less regular visits among them. 
The Germans were better farmers than the 
Scotch-Irish. They were equally thrifty and more 
practical—for every Scot has a touch of the vision- 
ary. The Germans, therefore, acquired the rich, 
lower-lying limestone lands, cleared the trees out 
by the roots, and built substantial houses and 
barns, while the Scotch-Irish, who outnumbered 
them five to one, pushed up on the hill slopes and 
farther into the forests to be huntsmen, traders, 
pioneers, and ‘‘settlers,’’ rather than farmers. 
The older English settlements in the Seaboard 
of Virginia had now become so permanent and 
populous, and life had become so secure and civi- 
lized, that they began to hunger for adventure and 
—good investments. In 1749 the Ohio Company 
was formed by Thomas Lee, Lawrence and Augus- 
tus Washington (brothers of George Washing- 
ton), and nine or ten other Virginia gentlemen. 
Their intention was to acquire title to great tracts 


Adventurers for Freedom 43 


of land, to send out hunters, trappers, and traders 
to barter with the Indians and later to sell land to 
settlers. The scheme promised rich returns. 
Thirty thousand deerskins were being shipped 
from North Carolina in a single year, besides the 
more valuable pelts and furs in unnumbered quan- 
tities. The company obtained a charter to locate 
and settle five hundred thousand acres between the 
Kanawha and Monongahela Rivers, and upon the 
waters of the Ohio River below Pittsburgh. They 
could thus pick their choice from most of West 
Virginia, Southern Ohio, Southern Indiana, and 
Northern Kentucky. 

They sent out Christopher Gist and a ‘‘survey- 
ing’’ party to explore. Three years later George 
Washington, on his way to confer with the French 
commander, met Gist at Will’s Creek and per- 
suaded him to go with him as guide through the 
forests. 

About the same time Dr. Thomas Walker was 
doing some very extensive ‘‘surveying’’ for a 
similar enterprise, the Loyal Land Company, 
which had a grant of eight hundred thousand 
acres in what is now Kentucky. His exploring 
party followed the ‘‘warrior’s path’’ down the 
valley of Virginia, along the Holston River 
through Tennessee, and over Cumberland Gap 
into Kentucky, then along the Rockcastle River, up 
the Kentucky River, across the Big Sandy, and 
back to Virginia along the Greenbriar River, 


44 The Land of Saddle-bags 


Dr. Walker’s party consisted of Ambrose Pow- 
ell, William Tomlinson, Colby Chew, Henry Law- 
less, and John Hughes. Hach had a horse, a rifle, 
and a dog, while the baggage was carried by two 
pack horses. 

Dr. Walker has left a very interesting and ac- 
curate journal of the four months’ trip. The last 
entry in the journal reads, ‘‘We killed in the 
Journey 13 Buffaloes, 8 Elks, 53 Bears, 20 Deer, 
4 Wild Geese, about 150 Turkeys, besides small 
game. We might have killed three times as much 
meat if we had wanted it.”’ 

It should be remembered that hunters often 
lived almost exclusively upon a meat diet. For 
weeks they would be without flour or meal. They 
suffered only if they ran short of salt. 

The Indians of western New York, Pennsylvania 
and Ohio, especially the Shawnees, were very trou- 
blesome. They were continually incited by the 
French, who wished to destroy all English settle- 
ments in the Mississippi Valley so that the field 
might be left clear for French hunters and trap- 
pers. But in the early days the Southern Indians, 
especially the Cherokees, were friendly. They 
traded with the settlers, sold land to them, and 
made honorable treaties. Several forts were built 
with their consent and assistance, and they agreed 
to furnish specified numbers of warriors to assist 
the settlers against the French Indians. 

The expedition of General Braddock against the 


Adventurers for Freedom ee 


French had important and unforeseen conse- 
quences. When the French forces at Fort du 
Quesne heard of Braddock’s approach, they felt 
already defeated, and their allied Indians natu- 
rally shared their dread. But when under Beau- 
jeu’s leadership the invincible redcoats were de- 
feated and almost annihilated by mere Indians, 
respect for the white man’s warfare gave way toa 
self-confident eagerness for revenge against all 
these English-speaking settlers that had invaded 
their hunting-grounds. Attacks on the settlements 
became frequent. In 1762 the Indians killed or 
captured two thousand persons and drove two 
thousand families from their homes on Pennsyl- 
vania’s western border. At Muddy Creek sixty 
Indians visited the settlement as friends and were 
treated hospitably, but they murdered all the men 
and marched the women and children through the 
forest until they approached another settlement. 
There the Indians left the women under guard out- 
side the settlement while they went inside and ef- 
fected another treacherous massacre and capture. 
The frontier settlers made vigorous appeals for 
help to the Pennsylvania Assembly, but the As- 
sembly paid no heed. What did it matter if a lot 
of these headstrong Scotch-Irish were massacred? 
To emphasize their plea, the frontiersmen even 
drove a wagon-load of the corpses through the 
streets of Philadelphia; but the Assembly offered 
neither help nor sympathy; and they sent neither 


46 The Land of Saddle-bags 


soldiers nor ammunition. No wonder, as Park- 
man records, ‘‘The frontier people of Pennsyl- 
vania, goaded to desperation by long-continued 
suffering, were divided between rage against the 
Indians and resentment against the Quakers who 
had yielded them cold sympathy and inefficient. 
aid.’’ 

The Scotch-Irish thereupon organized several 
companies of Rangers to defend the settlements, 
and fighting with Indians gradually became more 
common than friendship with them. 

The failure of the Assembly to send help in de- 
fense of the outlying settlements resulted in a 
great petition sent by a strong deputation to 
Philadelphia to demand for the frontier people a 
greater share in the government of Pennsylvania. 

The activity of the Indians and the inactivity of 
the Pennsylvanian government combined to stimu- 
late the immigration of the frontier people down 
the Valley of Virginia, which was soon dotted far- 
ther and farther with settlers’ cabins, and in 1764 
two townships, Mecklenburg and Londonderry, 
were laid out in North Carolina. 

Always as the settlers pushed farther on, the 
fringe of hunters and trappers took flight and 
moved before them farther into the depths of the 
wilderness. But while they hurried on to escape 
from the forest clearing of the settlers, they really 
formed the entering wedge for the forces of civili- 
zation that followed them, 


Adventurers for Freedom 47 


We have now noted three reasons why migra- 
tion moved down the Valley of Virginia instead of 
moving west from New York, Pennsylvania, and 
Virginia, across the Alleghenies: (1) the rough, 
jagged, impenetrable surface of the mountains on 
the west; (2) the rich soil, the scenery, and the 
delightful hunting found in the Valley itself; (3) 
the hostile Indians on the west and the consequent 
proclamation of the authorities forbidding settlers 
to go on the other side of the Mountains. 

Yet, in spite of these excellent reasons, men 
went west. Before Braddock’s defeat, Christo- 
pher Gist had spent a couple of years exploring 
and hunting on the Ohio River and some of its 
tributaries, notably the Scioto, the Miami, the 
Licking, and the Kentucky. John Findlay went in 
a canoe down the Ohio as far as the site of Louis- 
ville, and thence with the Shawnees he tramped 
through the wilderness to Kan-ta-ke, an Indian 
corn granary, perhaps a dozen miles east of the 
present town of Winchester, Kentucky. 

All such exploring parties consisted of about 
half a dozen well-armed, experienced woodsmen. 
After these organized scouting expeditions, 
hunters and trappers naturally followed by ones 
or twos. They were men who lived alone all 
winter in a rough shack while they killed enormous 
quantities of fur-bearing animals and deer. As 
more and more hunters were attracted by the re- 
ports of hides being brought out, the game grew 


48 The Land of Saddle-bags 


scarcer, and some of the hunters brought their 
families and settled down as semi-farmers, while 
the rest moved deeper into the forest. 

Perhaps we can perceive this wave-like, or 
pendulum, progress of hunters and settlers if we 
follow the migrations of a typical family, such as 
were the Boones, the Lincolns, the Seviers, or the 
Robertsons. 

In 1750 Daniel Boone moved with his father, 
brothers, and uncles from their home in Penn- 
sylvania into the Valley of Virginia. They stayed 
in Rockingham County one season, presumably to 
raise a crop of corn. They then moved on down 
to the valley of the river Yadkin. Here the father 
and most of the uncles settled permanently and 
lived the rest of their lives. But Daniel, fifteen or 
sixteen years after his marriage, moved his family 
to Watauga, in Tennessee, a region he had ex- 
plored ten or twelve years before. He had scarce- 
ly built his cabin before the whole valley was over- 
run with Scotch-Irish from North Carolina, com- 
ing there by thousands on account of the wrongs 
they received from the Government officials. 

The next year, accordingly, in 1773, Daniel 
Boone and his wife, Rebecca Bryan, and their chil- 
dren started for Kentucky, where Boone had been 
hunting and exploring some years before. With 
them went forty Bryans, Captain William Russell, 
and several others. But in Powell’s Valley, just 
before they reached Cumberland Gap, the moun- 


Adventurers for Freedom ‘49 


tain pass into Kentucky, they were attacked by In- 
dians. Several were killed, among them Boone’s 
eldest son, and the party decided to return to Wa- 
tauga until the region became safer. Boone, hav- 
ing already sold his Watauga home, went into the 
Clinch Valley, near Russell. Two years later he 
moved his family to Boonesboro, where, in the 
meantime, he had built log cabins and started a 
stockade or fort. His migration from Pennsyl- 
vania, where he had lived sixteen years, to Ken- 
tucky thus took twenty-five years. He spent a 
year in Virginia, twenty years in four different 
places in North Carolina, and four years in 
Tennessee. 

It was, therefore, when he was forty-one years 
old, that he thus brought his family to Boones- 
boro, and he lived in Kentucky thirteen years. 
Then Boone’s land was seized on technical error 
by shrewd title-sharks, and in 1788 he moved to 
the mouth of the Great Kanawha River, now in 
West Virginia. For eleven years he lived here- 
about, but again coming into conflict with regis- 
tered titles, in 1799 he decided to go beyond the 
jurisdiction of the United States. Accordingly, 
he moved across the Mississippi River into Span- 
ish territory, penetrating nearly fifty miles west 
of St. Louis, and here lived for twenty years. His 
wife died when he was seventy-eight, and shortly 
thereafter he was persuaded to give up living 
alone in his cabin. From that time he lived in his 


50 The Land of Saddle-bags 


son’s two-story stone house. Yet in his eighty- 
fifth year his sons could scarcely restrain him from 
starting out alone, or with an Indian lad, to begin 
life anew in the unexplored Rocky Mountains. 

Boone always felt uncomfortably restricted 
when neighbors crowded their homes too close 
around him. He wanted to live in the open. He 
enjoyed the freedom of the unfenced wilderness. 
His life therefore was a succession of flights from 
his neighbors. However, he was not a recluse. 
In fact he was very genial and social in his nature, 
always enjoying neighbors—but not too close. He 
wanted elbow room. Like a sociable English gen- 
tleman, he needed a scope of land large enough 
to be alone when he wished. In this Boone was 
typical; he constantly led settlers into new terri- 
tory, and as constantly fled from their midst as 
soon as they began to clear the forests. 


The settlements on the Watauga are historically 
important, and we can get a glimpse of their 
development and at the same time note another 
instance of the wave-like progress of the settlers 
if we follow the migrations of the Robertson 
family. 

In 1760 Daniel Boone and others had hunted 
through the region, and, as was usually the case, 
the first settlers followed the first hunters eight 
or ten years later. Accordingly, in 1768 we find a 
few settlers in the Watauga Valley. 


Adventurers for Freedom 51 


James Robertson, a Scotch-Irishman who had 
settled in Orange County, North Carolina, was 
much dissatisfied with the political and social con- 
ditions in that locality. The older parts of North 
Carolina had been settled long enough to develop 
an aristocracy composed of the prosperous and 
influential people. They controlled the Assembly 
and the Government and made laws to suit them- 
selves, as aristocracies always do. They looked 
down upon the swarm of new immigrants that 
was sweeping along the Valley of Virginia into 
the rugged western end of Carolina. Corrupt of- 
ficials, sheriffs, taxgatherers, even judges, raised 
in the pioneers a storm of angry protest. When 
the protest was unheeded, the Mountain men, burn- 
ing with a sense of injustice and insult, organized 
themselves into armed bands called Regulators, 
whose purpose was to see justice done by the 
courts. But there is always danger that such 
bands may be too hasty in resenting wrongs. 
Some of the more thoughtful and steady citizens 
discussed the wisdom of moving away from Caro- 
lina into the wilderness that was under the rule 
of Virginia, the government of which they con- 
sidered less corrupt. 

James Robertson volunteered to go on an ex- 
ploring expedition. In the valley of the Watauga 
he found two settlers, William Bean, doubtless of 
Scottish Highland blood, and a man named Honey- 
cut. Robertson liked the region and staked out 


52 The Land of Saddle-bags 


land for himself and friends. He stayed at Honey- 
cut’s cabin while he cleared some land and raised 
a crop of corn. After gathering his corn, he left 
it in Honeyeut’s care and returned for his family 
and neighbors. During his year of absence the 
situation in Carolina had grown from bad to 
worse. The officials had become more insolent, the 
Regulators more determined, until a battle had 
been fought, May 16, 1771. Governor Tryon, in- 
stead of investigating the charges of corruption 
and injustice, had marched into the disaffected dis- 
trict with a thousand of the militia. The Moun- 
tain People, hearing of his coming, gathered with 
their rifles at Alamance, two thousand of them, ~ 
and, demanding justice, refused to disperse. The 
battle lasted all day. The Regulators, having no 
supply of ammunition, were finally forced to with- 
draw, leaving two hundred of their number dead 
on the field. Robertson’s glowing report of Wa- 
tauga, coming in such a time of gloom, was de- 
cisive with his neighbors, and sixteen families 
started at once for the new lands staked out for 
them in the western reaches of Virginia. 

But they were soon disappointed to learn that 
the new survey of the western borders—necessi- 
tated by recent Indian treaties—left the Watauga 
region outside of both Virginia and Carolina. 
Robertson and his neighbors therefore made a 
treaty with the Indian tribe and leased from them 
the land he had staked out. Some of the settlers 


‘rayjyoq B@ Aq 4t oovider 10 ‘asnoy ALey 09 
ppe woos Tim Aoyy ‘Aqsray, pue AyQpeey vie ofdoed Sunod oyy yy “AvPO YIM Yo pue 
OpIsuL potojseid puv astassoro dn prep poom yo sdiys uryi jo ymaq Aouwryo vB YAN 
—SSa[MOPULM Us}JO—eSnoYy UOOI-oU0 B SplINg pUB [ILS B SollIvU MOT[e} Sunod VY 


NIGVO SSHTMOCGNIM V 








WHERE RIVERS AND STREAMS ABOUND 


In the beautiful “Valley of Virginia” a traveler. as in old 

romance, hails the ferryman from the opposite shore. With 

a large oar or pole the owner propels his boat in the path 

allowed it by a wire cable to which it is attached by a ring. 

Beside another Mountain stream is a natural fall. Here another 

traveler hails the miller, who with a twelve- or fifteen-foot wheel 
grinds his “turn” of corn into “bread.” 


Adventurers for Freedom 53 


seem to have bought land from individual Indians, 
an unusual proceeding. 

As soon as these seventeen families were settled, 
thousands followed them from their old home. 
They were outside the boundaries of civilized gov- 
ernment, therefore the leading men bound them- 
' selves into an association, drew up a constitution, 
and established the first republic in America. 
Theodore Roosevelt in The Winning of the West 
admits that this constitution was ‘‘the first ever 
adopted by a community of American born free- 
men.’’ 


It is interesting to note the contribution made 
by the Mountain People to the idea of independ- 
ence and the spirit of democracy. General his- 
torical statements can be at best only approximate. 
Many Scotch-Irish that did not go into the Moun- 
tains eagerly joined, both in thinking and in ac- 
tion, with their bolder and more direct kinsfolk of 
the frontier. Hanna says, ‘‘It was Patrick Henry 
and his Scotch-Irish brethren from the western 
counties that carried and held Virginia for inde- 
pendence.’’ 

In the colonies there were many partisans of the 
King who did all they could to prevent the move- 
ment for Independence. Outside of New Eng- 
land about one third of the population were 
Tories. There were no Tories among the Scotch- 
Irish. Their experiences with the royal govern- 


54 The Land of Saddle-bags 





ment for two hundred years had been too severe. 
Bitter injustice, humiliating insults, cruel taxa- 
tion, hypocritical ecclesiastical exactions, religious 
persecution, and supercilious oppression had ham- 
mered their resistance into steel. Their minds 
and memories were too keen for smooth words to 
deceive them. ‘‘The active part which the Scotch- 
Irish took in the American Revolution was a con- 
tinuation of popular resistance to British policy 
that began in Ulster.’’* 

Because they lived far in the wilderness, with 
no protection from the settlements or government 
officials, they learned to protect themselves. This 
habit of self-reliance, of personal independence, 
added to their resentment at British aggression, 
made them inevitably resisters of tyranny. And 
their remoteness from polite society, together with 
their Scottish bluntness, made them assert their 
determination with unmistakable clearness and 
force. Such men, expressing vigorously their 
positive convictions, strongly influenced the whole 
community and naturally became leaders of 
thought and action. The Palatine Germans, the 
Dutch and the French Huguenots, with similar 
background of persecution, easily followed their 
lead. 

The English settlers also that seeped into the 
Mountain population from Virginia had inherited 
traditions of prompt and resolute action that 

1 Ford, The Scotch-Irish in America, p. 458. 


Adventurers for Freedom 55 





readily fused into the frontier spirit of independ- 
ence. 

If we were not so ignorant of the history of the 
Mountain People, it would not surprise us that 
they took such leadership in the movement for 
American Independence. The declaration and 
constitution of the Watauga Association in 1772 . 
the declaration at Abingdon, Virginia, in J anuary, 
1775; the raising of the fag of a new and inde- 
pendent nation called Transylvania at Boones- 
boro, Kentucky, May 23, 1775; the Mecklenburg 
Resolutions in North Carolina, May 31, 1775; all 
these declarations by Mountain men made possible 
the more widespread Continental Declaration of 
Independence at Philadelphia, July 4, 1776. 

The large population of Scotch-Irish scattered 
throughout all the colonies had not yet been ab- 
sorbed by the older population and settled into 
conventional compliance. When Independence 
was being agitated, they naturally followed the 
fearless lead of their frontier brethren and thus 
gave unity to the whole movement. 

The Atlantic settlements were isolated from 
each other by virtue of their geographic position, 
but they were isolated even more because of dif- 
ferences in feeling. The Puritans of New England 
were very different from the Dutch of New York, 
and they were also very different from the Eng- 
lish in Virginia. The Scotch-Irish, on the other 
hand, were one people, united by mood and feel- 


56 The Land of Saddle-bags 


ing, in spite of the fact that they were scattered 
throughout New England, New York, Pennsyl- 
vania, Maryland, Virginia, and all the Carolinas. 
And it was just because all the Scotch-Irish felt 
and behaved the same way no matter where they 
lived that their widespread settlement actively 
leavened their different communities and made 
possible an organized unity of feeling and purpose 
that was continental in its scope. 

© Even so brief an historical sketch as this would 
be incomplete without some consideration of the 
large share the Mountain People had in fighting 
for Independence—as well as in talking for it. 

George Washington led’ a company of these 
Mountain men against the French in 1754, but was 
driven back at Great Meadows. The following 
year when General Braddock came to punish the 
I’rench for their insolence Washington accom- 
panied him with a hundred Mountain men from 
North Carolina, young Daniel Boone being among 
them. All through the French and Indian War, 
the defence of the western settlements was left to 
the Mountain men, and they supplied besides many 
experienced Indian fighters for the armies that 
fought on the Northern border and invaded Can- 
ada. 

As soon as the Continental Congress had 
launched the Revolution by appointing Washing- 
ton commander, the first troops to join him were 
Mountain men—Morgan’s Riflemen and Nelson’s 


Adventurers for Freedom 57 


Riflemen. Washington had led these frontiersmen 
before, and he welcomed them gladly at Cam- 
bridge. They brought with them, of course, their 
own hunting rifles, and thus were the first to use 
rifles in warfare. They were of great service to 
Washington, not only on account of their skill as 
sharpshooters, but because of their cool courage 
and determination. They were men who could be 
trusted to act alone with fearless judgment. It 
was their quality of personal independence that 
won the battles of King’s Mountain and Cow- 
pens and drove Lord Cornwallis to his surrender 
at Yorktown. 

The Mountain men were keenly aware of Fergu- 
son’s published threat to hang them and destroy 
their homes. When they heard of his march to- 
wards the frontier settlements with eleven hundred 
well-equipped soldiers, they gathered by scores 
at Isaac Shelby’s summons, and a thousand met 
at the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River. 

They pushed on through the snow-encumbered 
forests very rapidly, some on horses and some on 
foot, scarcely stopping to eat or sleep until they 
reached Cowpens the night of October sixth. 
Here they had expected to find the enemy. But 
Ferguson had adroitly slipped away. 

Several hundred fresh men joined them here, 
bringing news of the British encampment thirty 
miles away. They slaughtered a few cattle, swal- 
lowed some hastily cooked beef, and in less than 


58 The Land of Saddle-bags 


an hour all that had fit horses—perhaps seven 
hundred and fifty—hurried on. Many eagerly 
followed on foot. They marched all night in the 
rain, and reached King’s Mountain, on the top of 
which were the British, about three o’clock in the 
morning. It was along mound sloping up on three 
sides, but a sheer precipice on the fourth. With- 
out waiting to rest or eat, the frontiersmen at- 
tacked Ferguson’s soldiers, entrenched behind 
baggage wagons on the top of this mound. Isaac 
Shelby had told the Mountain men to shelter them- 
selves as much as possible behind trees and rocks; 
to aim carefully; and to ‘‘get’’ the British. His 
final instruction was ‘‘ Every man must be his own 
officer, and use his own judgment.’’ 

The British commander and 224 of his soldiers 
were killed, 163 were wounded, and 716 sur- 
rendered as prisoners. Of the Mountain men 28 
were killed and 68 were wounded. This surpris- 
ing victory turned back Cornwallis’ expedition, 
and was the first step in his defeat. 

Daniel Morgan with his riflemen struck another 
astonishing blow at Cowpens the next year (De- 
cember 17, 1781), when he routed Tarleton, who 
lost 110 killed, 258 severely wounded, and 600 
prisoners. The rest fled. A British writer says 
that ‘‘during the whole period of the war, no other 
action reflected so much dishonor on the British 
arms.”’ 

In the War of 1812 a large proportion of the 


Adventurers for Freedom 59 


land forces were men from the Mountain region. 
In a report to the United States Senate in 1834, 
the committee mentions five hundred pensioners of 
the Revolutionary War that were even then living 
in the mountains of Kentucky. The rest of Ap- 
palachia could undoubtedly have shown as great a 
proportion. In the Civil War the Mountain Peo- 
ple were overwhelmingly on the side of the Union, 
and furnished far more than their quota of fight- 
ers. 

With such noble history in mind, it would seem 
scarcely necessary to notice an erroneous state- 
ment made long ago by a careless writer, but it has 
been so widely quoted that a brief reference to 
the facts must be made to correct it. This state- 
ment maintains that the Mountain People took 
their origin from Indents, Redemptioners, and 
Convicts. As a matter of fact, very few of the 
convicts deported to America had committed gross 
criminal offenses. Most of them were victims of 
religious or political persecution merely and 
should under no circumstances be identified with 
the low criminal class. So far from being erim- 
inals in the ordinary sense, they were sometimes of 
the noblest blood and the highest moral excellence. 
Moreover, the total number of convicts sent to the 
Virginias by English judges was very small. They 
would not constitute one thousandth part of the 
progenitors of the Mountain People, even if they 
had all left the settlements and gone into the 


60 The Land of Saddle-bags 


mountains. There is little evidence that any of 
them ever left the seaboard settlements. 

Indents were persons bound by written agree- 
ments (indentures) to work for a specified num- 
ber of years. Their labor was sold so that for the 
time specified they were virtually slaves. Because 
they were free after the specified time they were 
often called Redemptioners. The sale of Redemp- 
tioners was not abolished until 1820. 

The whole system was largely a scheme of the 
ship owners. Some of them paid emigration 
agents three florins for every person over ten 
years old whom they induced to embark. These 
agents, pretending to be friends, fleeced the emi- 
grants. In many instances, with the connivance 
of the ship owners, the passengers’ baggage and 
food supplies for the voyage were not put on 
board, then exorbitant sums were charged for food, 
and the betrayed passengers were forced to sign 
an agreement to sell their labor for several years 
to pay their passage. To mention a few cases: 

(1) A noble lady banked one thousand rix- 
thalers with one of these agents, who stole it, and 
she, with her two half-grown daughters and a 
young son, was sold in 1753. 

(2) John Reinier, who was abundantly supplied, 
was robbed by the ship-captain of money, books, 
and drugs, and was forced to sell himself for seven 
years. 

(3) Fred Helfenstein, probably a lineal de- 


Adventurers for Freedom 61 


scendant of the Emperor Maximilian, similarly 
was forced to sell himself as a Redemptioner in 
Georgia. 

(4) Abraham Gale of Maryland sent for his 
wife and two sons. They sailed from Dublin, but 
fell in with a rascal who sold them ostensibly to 
pay passage, although Gale stood ready to pay it 
over again. 

Instances of this sort indicate that being a Re- 
demptioner was not necessarily a disgrace. But 
while such victims were far too numerous, only 
the grossest ignorance could imagine that the five 
millions of our Mountain People could have sprung 
from so small a source. Besides this, the Redemp- 
tioners were obviously not free to go out to the 
frontier, and most of them, after their servitude 
was ended, naturally became part of the seaboard 
population where they were. It is evident that 
very few of these ‘‘bound out’’ persons could ever 
have penetrated into the mountains, certainly not 
in numbers large enough to have any perceptible 
influence either for good or for evil upon the 
Mountain People. 

In these days of somewhat formidable and di- 
verse programs of Americanization, it is well to 
spend a little time surveying our origin. What 
were the purposes, human or divine, that gave 
birth to our nation? What were the elements 
selected from the Old World out of which to build 
the New? 


62 The Land of Saddle-bags 


The symbol of America is the pioneer, hardy, 
honest, independent, fearless. At the heart of 
our nation are the simple virtues of the frontier. 
The true spirit of America is the pioneer spirit. 
The history of America is a series of pioneerings, 
each successive frontier pushed farther into the 
wilderness than the last. 

The ideal American must have the hunger for 
liberty and the practical courage that impelled 
our fathers to cross the uncharted ocean and 
brave the rigors of the wilderness alone. He 
must also rise above the allurement of personal 
comfort. He must be indifferent to the affecta- 
tion of aristocracy or social superiority. He 
must be cautious, yet friendly. He must think 
for himself, yet be hospitable to new ideas. He 
must be democratic, yet never swept away by the 
mob. He must have in his heart’s core a trust in 
God, a reverence for woman, a loyalty to the 
family, yet his most serious thoughts are lit up 
by a sense of humor that insists on setting things 
in their true proportion. 

In the recesses of the Appalachian Mountains 
these fundamental elements of the American char- 
acter are found today in stark simplicity, uncon- 
taminated by the rush of business or the greed of 
money; unencrusted with social ambitions; un- 
broken by industrial fears. This rich deposit of 
true Americanism is a priceless possession, the 
unspoiled heritage of the American people, 


Elizabethan Virtues 


Elizabethan Virtues 


F the question were submitted to an 
impartial jury as to what is the chief 
trait of Highland people the world over, 
the answer would be _ independence. 
Should one ask the outstanding trait 
manifested by the pioneer, the reply 
would be independence. Inquire what is 
the characteristic trait of rural folk, par- 
ticularly of the farming class, and inde- 
pendence will again be the answer. Put 
the query as to what is the prevailing 
trait of the American, and the unani- 
mous verdict is likely to be independence. 
We have then, in the Southern High- 
lander, an American, a rural dweller of 
the agricultural class, and a mountaineer 
who is still more or less of a pioneer. 
His dominant trait is independence raised 

to the fourth power. 
JOHN C. CAMPBELL 


The Southern Highlander 
and His Homeland 


CHAPTER FOUR 
Khzabethan Virtues 


T is perhaps inevitable, but none the less un- 
| fortunate, that most of those who write about 
the Mountain People do not live among 
them. It is very easy to portray oddities instead 
of fundamental and vital traits. The outsider 
naturally notices peculiarities and describes them. 
These are thereupon taken to be representative, 
when they may be decidedly exceptional. This 
does not mean that we should expect everyone to 
agree with our own observations. It is doubtless 
true that if a thousand outsiders who had observed 
Mountain People and Mountain conditions for over 
a year should be consulted, they might not be at all 
unanimous about the dominant characteristics of 
the Mountain People. 

Some observers say that there are no racial 
characteristics. They insist that such peculiari- 
ties as they have are merely local; that any body 
of people shut apart for two hundred years among 
mountains and narrow valleys would necessarily 
take on the exact idiosyncrasies here found. These 
observers have perhaps an unnecessary timidity 
about the word racial, as if any differences that 
could be called racial would be a stamp of infe- 
riority. But is it true that any and every strain 


of humanity is necessarily inferior to the con- 
65 


66 The Land of Saddle-bags 


glomerate mixture of our American population? 

Other observers describe them as so distinct 
from the rest of us that we can scarcely feel much 
kinship with them. Their actions, their motives, 
their outlook upon life, are portrayed as so dif- 
ferent from ours that they are made to seem a 
strange, peculiar, and far-off people. 

Both of these views are extreme and are there- 
fore erroneous. Hach ignores very important as- 
pects of the matter. There can be no doubt after 
careful consideration that the geographical factors 
of the country have had tremendous influence on 
the Mountain People. The rural problem which 
confronts us in all parts of the country is here 
very strongly accentuated. As everywhere else, 
it is roughly measured by the distance of the 
rural community from its agora. This agora must 
signify a place not merely for buying and selling, 
but for the exchange of thought as well. It is a 
forum as well as a market-place. It is the heart 
and center of communal life. Here is the nucleus 
of transportation, education, legislation, religion, 
and recreation. 

Since the distance of a rural community from 
its agora is estimated, not in miles, but in the time 
and effort of travel, a mountain community with 
no real roads is the most rural of all; it is rural 
almost to isolation. Life in such a community is 
limited by very serious deprivations. But life 
here also develops great qualities of resourceful. 


Elizabethan Virtues : 67 


ness, independence, and leisure, such as can hardly 
be gained in city life. 

These forces of environment, however strong 
their impress, are not sufficient to account for the 
Mountain People. They possessed remarkable 
qualities inherent in themselves before ever they 
came into this environment. It is, of course, not 
quite accurate to speak of the characteristics com- 
mon to them as racial, since the Mountain People 
are not all from one race or nationality. Broadly 
speaking, however, they constitute a race, built up 
out of like-minded folk from among the English, 
French, Germans, and Scotch-Irish. 

They were a peculiar people when they came to 
America, and their peculiarities have curiously 
survived, in spite of the weathering of time. The 
settlement of America was due primarily to the 
hunger for freedom and the tremendous enthusi- 
asms awakened by the Renaissance. Hlizabethan 
England was a nation of young life that had just 
found its strength. It was the spirit of youth just 
entering maturity and enjoying its new-found 
powers. Naturally it was a time of tremendous 
energy and daring, when a people leaped from 
childhood into manhood. Tingling with the verve 
of the unbounded currents of new life, they 
launched with passionate eagerness into every new 
channel that lay open. Venturesome and self-con- 
fident, they explored the uncharted seas in tiny 
ships. With similar dash and delight, they pushed 


68 The Land of Saddle-bags 


into the unexplored regions of knowledge, until 
the universities moldering with a few priests and 
monks became crowded with men eager for learn- 
ing, hungry for the new-born science. 

All the interests of life were bathed in the 
golden glow of a magnificent imagination. Their 
new-kindled enthusiasm expressed itself in mani- 
fold activities. The same man was soldier and 
sailor, explorer and merchant, scholar and cour- 
tier, statesman and poet. It was these men, and 
the sons of such—men of unconquerable energy 
and unclouded hope—that dared to face the storms 
of the Atlantic and conquer a new world. What 
was true of Elizabethan England, was, in a lesser 
degree, true of all these other countries that had 
felt the eager stirrings of the Renaissance. In the 
majority of the migrations, the core of this free- 
dom was a religious conviction. The heart of this 
resolute spirit of personal independence was, in 
the leaders, a personal loyalty to God. 

Their sense of citizenship was unusually strong. 
They refused to be serfs or peasants; they were 
conscious of being men, men with serious self-re- 
spect and unbounded determination. They dared 
to assert individual rights. The rights they cared 
most about were the rights of conscience, the right 
to worship God as their enlightened consciences 
directed. These men, then, with this hunger for 
freedom, this personal loyalty to God, this abound- 
ing joy in the life of the unspoiled out-of-doors, 





QUILTS AND “KIVERS” 


“On bright summer days Aunt Sally brings’out her store of ‘bed 
kivers’ and ‘kiverlids’ and hangs them on the ‘gyarden pickets’ to 
‘sun out the moth eggs.’” Sometimes in geometrical patterns, 
sometimes in floral designs, vari-colored pieces of cloth are sewed 
upon white backgrounds, to make quilts. ‘Kivers” or “coverlids” 
are woven from homespun wool dyed in home-made decoctions, The 
patterns shown in the lower picture are (from left to right) Snail- 
trail, Chariot Wheel, Double Chariot Wheel, and (below) Federal 
City, Virginia Beauty, Lee’s Surrender, and Blooming Leaf. 








SOOPERATION AND COMPENSATION 





“We allers make our sweetnin’ from a sugar-tree, or raise a patch 

0’ sorghum.” The whole family joins both in making molasses 

and in drying fruit, layer by layer. Usually the “woman” super- 
intends these operations. 


Elizabethan Virtues 069 


were already a peculiar people. The Noncon- 
formists from England, the Seotch from North 
Ireland, the Protesters from Germany, the Hugue- 
nots from France, were all loyal to a personal con- 
viction and indignant at a personal tyranny. The 
achievement of independence of conduct against 
such obstacles demanded strong individualism, a 
trait made even stronger by the struggle. Added 
to this, the pioneer life of the new world developed 
still further their Elizabethan characteristics of 
determined independence, personal resourceful- 
ness, and untamable youth. The pioneers were 
eager to know life in all its height and depth, its 
breadth and richness. 

Their personal independence, springing from a 
passionate love of freedom, developed in them and 
in their descendants an unusual resourcefulness, 
an ability to get things, in some rough fashion, ac- 
complished. They acquired a mastery over the 
forces of nature sufficient for their immediate pur- 
pose. While this did not give technical efficiency, 
it did promote personal initiative. It did not in- 
vent machinery, but it did develop resourceful 
men. 

The quiet courage of the pioneer faces as part of 
the day’s work the dangers of the woods: wild ani- 
mals, tree-limbs broken off by a storm, the torrent 
of water during a tide in the creek that carries 
everything in the narrow valley before it; land- 
slides after long rains have softened the whole side 


70 The Land of Saddle-bags 


of a mountain; or quicksands in the fords of the 
river. He is used to going into all these dangers 
alone. He does not depend on his neighbors for 
help; he expects to manage somehow by himself. 
This quiet confidence in meeting emergencies, this 
habit of self-sufficiency, does not fit the Mountain 
man for gregarious enterprises. He is rather 
suspicious of cooperation. A man who asks a 
neighbor to help him undertake some task that 
every man usually does for himself must be lazy 
or incompetent—or ‘‘afeard.’’ Such a man will 
bear watching. Some such suspicious mood as this 
is back of the Mountain man’s slowness to co- 
operate. 

Then there is the Mountaineer’s lack of enthusi- 
asm for work, as such, and his strongly developed 
love of leisure. He has inherited the Calvinistic 
vividness of the primal curse which laid work upon 
man, not as a delight or a means to joyful achieve- 
ment, but as a stark penalty, a doom to be escaped 
whenever possible. If one is fastidious, querulous 
about comforts, dissatisfied unless he has this and 
that, of course he must spend laborious days to 
procure these coveted things. But if one is satis- 
fied with Nature’s own providing and finds unal- 
loyed pleasure where the Naiads of the streams 
and the Nymphs of the forest have never been dis- 
turbed, why reproach him for indulging in philo- 
sophic and contemplative leisure? 

In the complicated civilization of modern life 


Elizabethan Virtues Nierey 


we have standardized everything. There are no 
longer any individualities. Our family breakfasts 
are standardized. We all eat the same patent 
cereal and the same brand of bacon. We all have 
similar twin-beds and similar bathtubs. We wear 
the same undergarments and the same collars. 
The Mountain People, however, have not reached 
this stage. Being strong individualists, they take 
no pains to subdue their personal preferences in 
order to agree with what the social majority has 
declared proper. A Mountain man is not ashamed 
to avow his dislike of coffee or grapenuts, aspara- 
gus or soup. ‘‘I’m obleeged to you, I wouldn’t 
choose,’’ settles the matter without any explana- 
tory apologies. He has never adopted the slogan 
of the mob, ‘‘Let’s make it unanimous!’? - 

Living mostly out of doors, with no very near 
neighbors, and with this strongly developed tend- 
ency toward personal freedom, we can scarcely 
expect him to have a highly developed social con- 
sciousness, a trained sense of civic solidarity. 

On the other hand, the unconquerable and un- 
quenchable spirit of youth, the zest for new ex- 
periences, the joy in exploring in spite of hard- 
ships, have produced a poise of mind and an ease 
of manner that are a constantly refreshing sur- 
prise. (For Mountain People life has a zest which 
does not depend upon comforts. They are nature 
_ lovers, and they take Nature as they find her, with- 
out interjecting so many complicated conveniences. 


72 The Land of Saddle-bags 


This love of nature does not express itself in songs 
or poems about the woods, the flowers, or the sky. 
It is not a matter of words. The Highlanders’ de- 
light in it is largely inarticulate. Their joy is not 
in describing their contact with Nature, but in the 
contact itself, in feeling Nature’s soothing touch 
upon them, in the things they can do out of doors. 
‘‘Uncle Bog Stallins,’’ an old pioneer still living 
‘‘back in some purty rough country,’’ illustrates 
the essential boyishness of their out-of-door am- 
bitions. 

‘‘Do you know Mr. Stallins?’’? a Mountaineer 
was asked. 

‘‘Uncle Bog Stallins! Why, this creek were 
named for him. He’s been right puny this winter, 
but he’s peart. He had killed ninety-nine bar in 
his lifetime, and war fixin’ fer another hunt, when 
he tuk sick with a misery in his stummick. The 
doctors told him he’d got to die. But he prayed 
the good Lord to raise him up to kill jest one more 
bar, and shore enough He done it.’’ 

How faint and far-off seem the usual ambitions 
of life from the quaint seclusion of Uncle Bog’s 
world, with its far-stretching forest filled with tim- 
ber, game, and all that a man needs if he but at- 
tune his life to the simple chords of the forest 
harmonies. 

The Mountain men today are called shiftless be- 
cause they do not flock to the city where they might 
enjoy the great benefit of crowds, confusion, and 


Elizabethan Virtues ids: 


noise. They prefer grass and wild flowers or the 
rustle of leaves to pavements. They get more 
satisfaction from a hilltop view than from sky 
scrapers and factory smoke. They enjoy hunting 
more than golf. Must they, therefore, be called 
uncivilized? Hiven ‘‘civilized’’ people spend vaca- 
tions hunting or fishing. They forego the intricate 
and expensive conveniences of their homes. They 
sleep outdoors on a blanket; smoke their eyes out 
cooking their own food on a camp fire; go wet and 
dirty, and seem to enjoy their three weeks’ re- 
version to savagery. Why? Presumably because 
it is outdoors, and they feel the recuperative and 
satisfying contact with Nature. The Mountain 
People want this satisfaction to be constant and 
are willing to forego the city’s elaborate comforts 
in order to live closer to Nature’s breast. They 
are still tent-dwellers by preference. 

Besides the confident personal resourcefulness 
and the adventurous and picnicking spirit of youth, 
there is a third fundamental] trait—neighborliness. 
This also is a pioneer virtue. In the wilderness a 
traveler’s need constitutes a strong claim, but 
added to that is the fact that it is a pleasure to 
see a stranger. A host feels well repaid when he 
gives food and shelter to a man that brings news 
from afar. If the traveler be also a pioneer, there 
is a frankness on both sides, a sort of family fa- 
miliarity; their intercourse is easy, humanly 
friendly. The host has only a verbal and conven- 


74 The Land of Saddle-bags 


tional apology for the meagerness of his fare. 
What is good enough for him is good enough for 
anybody. He offers it without embarrassment. 
He meets you as an undoubted equal, unabashed 
and unafraid. 

Anything that might seem inhospitable is simply 
unthinkable. <A sister-in-law with a shiftless hus- 
band and half a dozen children descends without 
invitation and almost without warning upon a 
family whose house has two rooms and a lean-to 
shed for cooking. The family ‘‘have mighty leetle 
to do with.’’ Itis a hard struggle to provide for 
their own little brood. They live sparely and 
handle very little money in the course of the year, 
but they welcome her without comment. They di- 
vide up the bedding and make shake-up beds upon 
the floor every night. They sell their hog—their 
sole hope for the winter’s meat and lard—to buy 
groceries and meat, as week follows week. They 
use up most of their canned fruit. But they never 
hint that the visit is unduly prolonged. 

The Mountain man is reticent and inclined to be 
shy or suspicious with strangers, but this seldom 
interferes with his hospitality. His house, his 
food, his furniture, often seem meager, yet, if 
you, an utter stranger, were to appear unexpect- 
edly at the door, he would welcome you with a sim- 
ple and sincere, ‘‘We’re pore folks, we hain’t got 
much, but you’re welcome to what we have.’’ We 
might not consider his home sufficiently provis- 


Elizabethan Virtues re) 


ioned to dispense a generous hospitality. But he 
never hesitates. He has acquired much skill and 
experience in doing without. When all ‘‘brought- 
on’’ purchases must be carried on horseback in 
saddle-bags, there will occasionally be a scarcity 
of lamp-chimneys, baking powder, chinaware, or 
wheat flour. Dress-goods chosen and bought by 
the men on their journeys to the county seat are 
not likely to contribute to the beauty of the home. 

The Mountain People are essentially honest. 
They are, aS a rule, shrewd and enjoy a bargain. 
They are likely to emphasize the good points of the 
horse or cow they want to sell or swap. Trading 
is a game which two are supposed to play. But 
they are fundamentally honest. I have lived ten 
years without any locks on the doors, most of the 
time without a dog to guard the house, yet noth- 
ing has been stolen from it. 

The Mountain man is religious, if not always in 
practice, at least in unspoken reverence for God, 
the Bible, and the ordinances of religion. Scoffers 
are rare. Their philosophy is more proverbial 
than speculative, the wisdom of conduct, rather 
than a hungry-hearted search for origins. There 
is, aS might be expected, a shy strain of a literal- 
ized mysticism occasionally apparent. A man 
once asked me if I had considered what would have 
happened if Abraham had slain Isaac before the 
interrupting angel showed him the thicket-caught 
ram. ‘‘Well, Jesus wouldn’t never have come onto 


76 The Land of Saddle-bags 


the yearth. Kase we’d have been saved by the 
blood of Isaac.’’ I will confess that this proposi- 
tion gave me quite a shock and opened no mental 
thoroughfare. ‘‘The Bible says salvation’s by the 
shedding of blood, and hit war to come through 
Abraham’s seed, warn’t it? Well, if he’d shed 
Isaac’s blood, ye see salvation would ha’ come 
through Isaac, wouldn’t it? And thar ’ud never 
‘been no need fer Jesus, then.’? Whatever queer 
turns Biblical interpretation may take, there is 
seldom any disposition to question the authority 
of the Bible. Scripture is an impregnable rock, 
whose commands admittedly ought to be obeyed. 
But a failure to obey is considered a transgression 
much less flagrant than a defiant rejection or 
denial of the Bible’s authority. 

The other extreme, superstition, is more uncom- 
mon. But here and there an octogenarian believes 
in witchcraft and the laying of spells. 

‘‘Old Doe was a-walkin’ along with his wife. 
They was both elderly. She said, ‘Let’s go up to 
this house and git a light for our pipes.’ (Folks 
didn’t have matches—none to speak of—in them 
days; many a time I’ve walked a mile to a neigh- 
bor’s with a shovel to borrow fire.) Well, they 
found a child thar screamin’ and kickin’—be- 
witched. Doc told ’em to git him nine new pins 
that hadn’t never been stuck in cloth and a bottle. 
He putt the pins in the bottle and set it on the fire- 
board (mantel-shelf). Then he got a shingle and 


Elizabethan Virtues ds 


drew a picture of a witch-woman and told the man 
to set it up agin a stump and shoot it jest at sun- 
down. About a week atter that, Doc was comin’ 
by agin, and he inquired atter the child. Hit were 
allright. Then he axed had anybody died suddint- 
ly, and they told him an old woman across the val- 
ley had died with a shriek, ever when the man 
shot the picture with his rifle-gun. And the bot- 
tle on the fireboard busted into a thousand pieces, 
and they never did find ary one of the pins.’’ 

When ordinary means fail, a Mountaineer may 
consult a witch-doctor instead of an agricultural 
expert when ‘‘the cow gives quar milk, and the 
butter won’t come.’’ But his habit of doing 
things for himself instead of calling for help, to- 
gvether with his innate resourcefulness, largely 
counteracts fantastic notions. 


A visit to Uncle Abner and Aunt Sally, up on 
the headwaters of Rock Creek where no wagon 
has ever been, may give us a picture of the simple 
life that is not merely a philosophic pose. He and 
Aunt Sally have had eighteen children, all of 
whom are living. They have all left home except 
one young man, who ‘‘farms it’’ on the old place, 
and takes care of the old people. Aunt Sally is 
large, active, and well preserved. She mounts a 
mule and rides a dozen miles to the store. She has 
a few sheep, whose wool she cards and spins into 
yarn. Then she dyes it, warps it, and weaves it 


78 The Land of Saddle-bags 


on the heavy loom that her grandsire made mostly 
with his ax. ‘‘Hit ain’t so purty as the fotch-on 
goods, but it’s a heap endurabler. When my gals 
was a-raisin’, afore they married off, I allers 
aimed to git ’em some store clothes, and not shame 
’em none afore the fellers. But fur us old folks, 
homespun air good a-plenty.’’ 

On bright summer days, Aunt Sally brings out 
her store of ‘‘bed kivers’’ and ‘‘kiverlids’’ and 
hangs them on the ‘‘gyarden pickets’’ (the spht 
paling fence) to ‘‘sun out the moth eggs.’’ The 
‘‘kivers’’ are woven in pretty designs, blue and 
white, or white and red—‘‘mather red’’—madder 
being one of the most desirable dyes. Or the dye 
may be brown, made from the hulls of black wal- 
nuts, or brownish yellow, from hickory bark. Be- 
sides these ‘‘ wool kivers,’’ she exhibits with pride 
half a dozen coverlids with roses, lilies, and sun- 
flowers cut out of various colored cloth and sewed 
upon a white background. 

She has no kitchen stove because Uncle Abner 
thinks victuals taste better when cooked at the 
fireplace. ‘‘Come in and set awhile, and I’ll make 
some gritted bread for supper. Don’t ye love 
gritted bread with honey?’’ Aunt Sally brings in 
a board with a gigantic nutmeg grater on it, on 
which she rubs a dozen ears of milky corn. From 
the grated pulp she bakes the most delicious ‘‘ grit- 
ted bread.’’ ‘‘I allers keep a stand o’ honey; hit’s 
the healthiest sweetenin’ ther is.’’ 


Elizabethan Virtues 79 


‘“What’s a stand, Aunt Sally?’’ 

‘“Why, hit’s this,’’ pointing to what looks like an 
enormous wooden churn that would hold about fif- 
teen gallons. 

‘“What is it made of?”’ 

‘‘Hit’s made from mulberry staves, and the 
hoops is hickory. My grandmother had it when 
she were married.’’ 

Uncle Abner shows us a corn mill that he turns 
by hand. It consists of two round stones set in 
the top of a short, upright gum log. The top stone 
has a hole in the center through which he pours the 
corn with one hand while he turns the stone with 
the other. 

‘‘Tsn’t that pretty slow work, Uncle Abner?”’ 

‘‘Well, the old mortars were a heap tediouser. 
Folks usen to burn out a sort of bowl in a tree 
stump and then scrape it clean. Then they’d bend 
over a little hickory tree near by and tie the pestle 
to hit’s top. They’d pull down the pestle and 
pound the corn in the mortar, and the hickory 
would spring it up again, ready to pound down 
again. Yes, hit were slow. A man yearned what 
bread he got that-a-way.’’ Uncle Abner nodded. 
‘‘And I can recollect my father making gunpowder 
in one o’ them mortars. He’d scrape saltpeter 
outen the caves—that give the power—and burn 
red-bud for charcoal—some folks used white wal- 
nut—and pound ’em up fine with brimstone. Then 
he’d moist it and rub it and grain it through a fine 


80 The Land of Saddle-bags 


sieve. In three or four days he’d make seven or 
eight pounds o’ gunpowder.”’ 

Impressed by the slow stream of meal issuing 
from Uncle Abner’s hand mill, the visitor inquires, 
‘‘To you have to grind all your meal that way?’’ 

‘No, we don’t have to. Thar’s a leetle tub mill 
down the creek a mile or tharabouts.”’ 

‘CA tub mill! What’s that?’’ 

Uncle Abner looks surprised at such ignorance, 
but smiles with kind toleration as he proceeds pa- 
tiently to explain. ‘‘ When a man lives on a branch 
or a prong of the creek, whar the water’s lasty and 
thar’s a right smart trickle all the time, he puts 
him in a tub mill, and lets the water grind fer him. 

‘*Ye take a log and hew it till hit’s kindly hke a 
tub with a long spindle rising right out’n the midst 
of it. Run your water in a trough so it’ll hit right 
in the tub and as fast as hit turns o’ course the 
spindle turns too. Then ye fasten your grindin’ 
stone on the top o’ your spindle, and thar’s your 
mill. Of course ye make a roof and walls, and 
put a floor in, and thar’s a leetle room for grind- 
ing, up above the tub. The spindle goes up 
through the floor.’’ 

‘‘T don’t see how people knew how to make all 
those things.’’ 

‘“‘They had to. We didn’t have no money to 
buy the tricks and fixin’s they had down in the set- 
tlements. And we couldn’t ha’ brung them in 
hyer, noway. There ain’t no roads scarcely yit, 


Ehzabethan Virtues . St 


and ’twas worse back in them days. A man could 
fetch jest what he could pack in on his horse— 
or on his back like as not.”’ 

‘¢Why, how did you bring your furniture?”’ 

‘‘Never brung no furniture. Folks made it. 
My pappy made that bed out’n black warnut.’’ 

‘*But the springs! I know you’ve got springs 
on it because I’ve slept there.’’ 

He rises and turns back the feather bed and the 
corn-shucks mattress beneath. ‘‘Jest look at ’em. 
Hit’s a rope bed. They bore them holes in the 
sides and eends, and thread the rope through ’em 
and stretch it tight criss-cross. That’s all the 
springs a body needs. Well, I did bring on a 
leetle table-stand that were kindly purty to 
pleasure my woman. I carried it on horseback. 
But commonly we jest bring in some iron and 
delft, a leetle coffee, some indigo, and alum for 
dyein’.’’ 

‘*T should think you’d want sugar and soap.’’ 

‘“We allers make our sweetenin’ from a sugar- 
tree, or raise a patch o’ sorghum. And every- 
body makes soap out of ashes. That iron kittle 
thar’s helt many a bilin’ 0’ soap, besides hog- 
water at butcherin’, and clothes every Monday.’’ 

‘* Where do you wash?”’ 

‘‘Thar by the creek, in that battlin’ trough. Ye 
sob ’em and rensh ’em and rub ’em in the trough, 
and beat ’em with the batler on the battlin’ 
bench.”’ 


82 The Land of Saddle-bags 


A poplar log about six feet long had been split 
in two and turned flat side up. One end had been 
hollowed out for a washing trough, nearly four 
feet long and two feet wide. There was a little 
hole bored in the bottom, with a peg for a drain- 
plug. The two feet or more at the end that was 
not hollowed out was smoothed off to battle the 
clothes upon. 

‘‘Well, Uncle Abner, it looks quite like the origi- 
nal washing machine.’’ 

‘‘Yes, hit’s fer washin’. Battlin’s what makes 
the clothes white—that is, bilin’ and battlin’. 
Course I reckon the soap has a sight to do with it, 
too. Some women can make soap that jest drives 
the dirt like a nest o’ hornets. Hit’s got to git. 
Yes, sir!’’ 

Uncle Abner emphasizes this efficiency by biting 
off a fresh chew from a twist of homegrown to- 
bacco. Aunt Sally is sitting on the other side of 
the hearth placidly smoking. 

‘‘Don’t you ever smoke, Uncle Abner?’’ 

‘‘No, not scarcely ever. Smokin’s all right for 
a woman that can set around the fire and enjy it, 
but chawin’s a heap convenienter fer a man. Hit 
don’t tie him down nowhar like a pipe.’’ 

‘* Aunt Sally, are all your children married?’’ 

‘‘All but Bradley and Tom. And Tom, he’s 
aimin’ to marry him a woman afore long, now.’’ 

‘Well, you’ll be busy about the wedding, won’t 
you?’’ 


Elhzabethan Virtues 83 


‘‘No, young folks don’t have no weddin’ to 
speak of, these days. Now, when we war married, 
there was a heap o’ doin’s. We had an infare and 
waiters. I had a waiter, and he had a waiter.”’ 

‘*An infare, Aunt Sally, what’s that?’’ 

Aunt Sally sucks several strong puffs of smoke 
and seems to be lost in retrospection. Uncle Ab- 
ner takes up the tale. 

‘‘Well, an infare weddin’ was old-fashioned, 
one o’ them customs the old folks had. Sally’s 
folks gien us a big supper arter the weddin’. 
Everybody on the creek was thar, that is, the 
young folks, ye onderstand. I reckon thar must 
ha’ been forty or nigh about. They’d cooked 
most everything, deer-meat and fried ham and 
sausage, turkey and chickens, and all sorts of 
vegetables, and pies and cakes. Arter everybody 
had eat, they began to frolic and dance. We 
sat by the fire whilst they ran a set or two, then 
Sally leaned over and said, ‘Ab, why cain’t we run 
a set, too?’ I said, ‘We can, by ginger.’ So we 
run a set. Then all the fellars wanted to swing 
Sally, so we danced the Virginia reel. Well, we 
slept thar that night. Next day we went over to 
‘my folks and thar was another supper and another 
frolic. And the next day arter that we come up 
hyer, whar I’d built this house. But they don’t 
do that-a-way no more, not commonly, I mean.’’ 

No, but that’s the way kings and queens used 
todo. They called their waiter the Lord Chamber- 


84 The Land of Saddle-bags 


lain. It’s a custom that must have come down 
from old, old times. 

Almost everything at Uncle Abner’s seems to be 
home-made. His jugs, crocks, and jars are either 
a rich red or a deep blue, some of them quite 
shapely. But nearer the stores, indeed, perhaps 
in most places, the lard pail has driven out home- 
made pottery. Cedar piggins on the kitchen shelf 
look like small buckets upside-down. The churn 
is made in similar fashion. Even the old rifle, 
lying in the forked sticks nailed against the wall, 
was made by his uncle, who gained quite a reputa- 
tion throughout the district as a gunmaker. This, 
of course, Was a mere avocation, pursued at odd 
times, when other men were sitting around chat- 
ting. But his industry did not deprive him of the 
luxury of gossip, for whenever his little work-shed 
was open, men gathered there to talk, and the gun- 
smith could hear all the news and suppositions of 
the neighborhood without stopping his work. 

Every man undertook all ordinary activities for 
himself. Hach was farmer, trapper, builder, car- 
penter, shoemaker, wagoner, lumberman, rafts- 
man, blacksmith, and stone-mason. Hach served 
as barber, nurse, or undertaker, as occasion re- 
quired. Hvery one tanned small pelts, but for the 
family shoe leather, he went to a tanyard. But 
a tanyard, saltboiling, and blacksmithing required 
rather more skill, and soon kept a man busy all 
the time so that his farming and hunting to pro- 


Ehzabethan Virtues 85 


cure corn and meat for his family had to be either 
erowded into his odd moments or done for him by 
hirelings. | 

It might be expected that men so adept in all 
the circumstances of their lives and so resolute 
and independent in spirit would show capacity for 
self-government. On surveying their history we 
find this to be true. Again and again they have 
shown an inborn skill in self-government, an un- 
usual clear-headedness in organizing and setting 
up a working constitution, as at Watauga, Meck- 
lenburg, Franklin, and Boonesboro.' 

Most men of strong individuality and inde- 
pendent mind have the gift of persuasive speech. 
They can explain their aims and actions clearly, 
forcibly, and, perhaps most important for the 
gaining of interest, sympathetically. As might be 
expected, oratory is a characteristic gift of the 
Mountain People. Those who do not ‘‘foller 
speakin’ ’? themselves, cordially appreciate ora- 
tory in others. Men who cannot read and write 
are often alert and discriminating judges of 
thought and speech. Mountain People will travel 
miles to a ‘‘speakin’ ’’ and listen for hours with 
keen and eager enjoyment. They take unusual 
delight in being swayed by eloquence. 

This leads naturally to the consideration of a 
statement that is inconsistent with the usual con- 
ception of the Mountain People and contradic- 


1See Chapter Three. 


86 The Land of Saddle-bags 


tory to much that is written about them. They 
are frequently referred to as stolid, impassive, 
listless. As a matter of fact, they have strong 
and deep feelings, which are both intense and last- 
ing. But their feelings do not play upon the sur- 
face of their natures. Their faces are immobile 
unless deeply stirred. In religion their feelings 
play a prominent part, leading to extravagant ac- 
tions in ‘‘protracted meetings’’ and, in the case of 
the women, at funerals. In the courts of law, 
where men are not visibly stirred by emotion, they 
are largely governed by their personal feelings. 
Evidence has little chance against kinship or en- 
mity. Even in business dealings an opportunity 
to make money may be declined because of 
personal feelings. 

In sickness, friends and kinsfolk gather, and 
sometimes seriously impede recovery by crowding 
into the room and conversing continuously. They 
are more than willing to sit up all night or do any- 
thing else for a sick neighbor; or, in case of an 
accident, even if not very serious, to make per- 
sonal sacrifices. The claims of sympathy are 
paramount. A typical instance will illustrate this: 
A young cow mired down in thin mud away up 
on the edge of a steep hill. The mud acted like 
quicksand, and the helpless animal was sunk to the 
body before she was discovered. Neighbors gath- 
ered, got ropes around her, and dragged her out 
upon solid ground. She was exhausted and could 


Elizabethan Virtues 87 


not stand. Night was falling. It began to snow 
heavily,—twelve inches fell before morning,— 
and the cow was wet and chilled. Men went down 
to the foot of the steep, muddy hill and brought 
straw and an old carpet on which they laid the 
animal and covered her. Then they discovered 
that if she struggled to arise during the night, 
she would fall off the narrow ledge and be killed. 
So some of the men cut down young trees for 
posts, others went down and brought a post hole 
digger, others a ten-foot gate. With these they 
struggled up the steep and slippery hillside, holes 
were dug, posts set, the gate nailed to them, and 
the cow was protected against falling off the 
ledge. Some of the men offered to stay up there 
all night in the snowstorm. The next morning the 
cow was dragged upon a tarpaulin, and a lot of 
men all around it eased her down to a place level 
enough for a one-horse sled. This she was slid 
upon and dragged away to the barn, where a sling 
was made for her, her legs and body rubbed to re- 
store circulation, and windproof walls tempo- 
rarily put up around her. Night was falling the 
second day when the neighbors left. A day or 
two earlier these men had been too busy to come 
and work although they needed the money offered, 
but because there had been an accident, each man 
came promptly and would accept absolutely no 
pay for all his unusual exertion. Such unpaid 
neighborliness is very common. 


88 The Land of Saddle-bags 


In cases of serious sickness any neighbor may 
be called out of his field, his plowing stopped, and 
he and his horse requisitioned to go for the doc- 
tor. When death occurs, every neighbor is ex- 
pected to help in taking the news to distant rela- 
tives, in making the coffin, digging the grave, or 
acting as one of the numerous pall-bearers needed 
to carry the body up to the burial spot. 

The Mountain People are not musical as are 
the Italians or Germans. But one frequently 
hears the lilt of a song or the recitation of a ballad 
by the girls and women as they go about their 
work. At night the twanging of a banjo or the 
picking of a ‘‘dulcimore’’ comes cheerily out of 
the darkness as the traveler passes a lonely house. 
The music of the Mountaineers is, like so many of 
their possessions, a survival from an earlier day 
and some of their original airs are cited by so dis- 
tinguished and authoritative a critic as Cecil J. 
Sharp as tunes of remarkable beauty. Mr. Sharp 
has earned our lasting gratitude by snatching 
these from oblivion and preserving them in per- 
manent form.’ 

The banjo and the dulcimer are used for lyric 
music: they serve as accompaniment to song. But 
the chief musical instrument in the Mountains is 
the violin, which is much used at dances and 
frolics. This is the reason why many Mountain 


1 Campbell and Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern 
Appalachians. Putnam. . 


Hlizabethan Virtues —« 89 


preachers frown uponit. A visitor from outside is 
sometimes asked with conscientious wistfulness, 
‘*D’ye reckon there’s any harm in a fiddle?’’ 

The fiddles, like the banjos and dulcimers, are 
likely to be homemade, and the tunes have an ap- 
pealing flavor, a heart-pleasing quality, that seems 
homemade also. The tunes that have been handed 
down have been unconsciously modified till they 
express the movement, scope, and feeling of the 
individual fiddlers, whose independence is shown 
even in the way they hold their instruments. One 
man holds it against his chest instead of under his 
chin; another stands it upright upon his knee, or 
lays it along his arm. It is, of course, impossible 
here to reproduce the music, but its crudeness does 
not strike the listener as ludicrous, rather, per- 
haps, as wistful. 

Even the names given to it have a quaint homell- 
ness; for example: ‘‘Sugar in the Gourd.’’ A 
dried gourd is a common reeeptacle for salt or 
sugar. There is a hearty pleasure in finding that 
it is not empty. ‘‘Billy in the Low Ground,”’ 
Walk Along John,’’ ‘‘Big Hared Mule,’’ and 
‘‘Forked Deer’’ carry their own pleasant associa- 
tions. ‘‘Ways of the World”’ suggests the strange 
experiences of a traveler who has been in a town, 
perhaps into an adjoining county. ‘‘Bonaparte’s 
Retreat’’ and ‘‘Napoleon Crossing the Rocky 
Mountains’’ suggest even wider travel, mostly by 
way of the imagination. ‘‘Liquor All Gone,’’ 


90 The Land of Saddle-bags 


‘‘Parting Friends,’’ and ‘‘Glory in the Meeting 
House’’ bring us back to more common experi- 
ences, while ‘‘Calahan’’ and ‘‘The Last of Size- 
more’’ doubtless originally celebrated men whose 
deeds though dubious were doughty. 

Much has been said of the Mountain man’s 
strength, his skill in hunting and woodcraft, his 
endurance in the rough pioneer hardships that 
would seem impossibly formidable to our genera- 
tion. The Mountain man has, as a rule, less en- 
ergy of attack than of dogged, unshakable te- 
nacity. He has less dash than a hero of romance, 
but more endurance. He faces danger, not from a 
spirit of daring, but because it must be faced. He 
is courageous, but he inherits the caution of gen- 
erations of hunters. This caution makes him de- 
liberate. He may not show much eagerness to 
work in the rain or snow, but he will stand half a 
day in a drizzling rain to chat with a friend rather 
than dismiss him with any appearance of dis- 
courtesy. He will start over a steep mountain on 
a dark night of drenching sleet to bring a doctor, 
to carry out moonshine whiskey, or to go to a 
dance or a revival meeting. He, and even his wife, 
will walk thirty or forty miles in a day—a day 
that begins, perhaps, before dawn and extends 
into the night. 

A woman rises before day, chops some cooking 
wood, and gets breakfast for the family. Then 
she milks the cow and eats her own breakfast. 


Elizabethan Virtues | 91 


After that she carries a two-year-old baby up into 
the cove where they are ‘‘raisin’ the crap.’’ The 
slope is like the hypotenuse of a triangle, but the 
child cannot be left at home all day separated 
from the source of his nourishment. The mother 
hoes corn all day, and at night drags herself and 
the baby down to the house again, where she milks 
the cow, cooks supper, washes up the dishes, and 
perhaps ‘‘washes out a rag or two for the chil- 
dren’’ before she goes to bed. She works a six- 
teen-hour day, scarcely gets one baby weaned be- 
fore the next arrives, and for wages gets a home, 
the blessings of copious motherhood, and the privi- 
lege of wearing her husband’s name on her tomb- 
stone, which, with all her endurance, is sometimes 
settled upon her before she is fifty. 

Another indication of the vigor of the Moun- 
tain People is the size of the family. ‘‘Aunt Sally 
is the mother of eighteen children, and they’re all 
living.’’ ‘‘Aunt Betsy Ellen had twenty-two.’’ 
‘‘Aunt Marthy, up on Hickory Ridge, has twenty- 
four, fourteen boys and ten gals, and they’re 
every one living, or was the last I knowed.”’ 
‘‘Aunt Nervie’s youngest boy was borned on her 
fiftieth birthday. She lived to be a hundred and 
eight years old. Of course he outlived her. He 
died. at ninety-eight. His sister lived to be a 
hundred and eleven.’’ Similar data can be 
collected in many neighborhoods. 

We should not close this chapter on characteris- 


92 The Land of Saddle-bags 


tics without a word upon the manners of the 
Mountain People. They have not the awkward- 
ness or rawness sometimes found in rural dwell- 
ers. There is an unconscious dignity, a quiet 
courtesy, unspoiled by any conventional forms of 
politeness. The proprieties are very strictly ob- 
served. Children are taught ‘‘their manners”’ 
with sedulous care. The proprieties and good 
manners of a primitive and secluded people are, as 
a matter of course, not the forms prescribed by 
the diplomatic circles of Washington society. 
But, judged by inherent dignity and good taste, 
by sincerity and unhurried serenity, the manners 
of the Mountain People are probably not inferior 
to the etiquette generally observed at the White 
House receptions. I quote an opinion expressed 
by a keen and trained observer who has had con- 
siderable contact with the Mountain People in 
their own homes: 

‘‘They have the finest manners I ever saw, ut- 
terly un-self-conscious. They are the only people 
I ever saw that do not know there are any grades 
in society. We may try to ignore it, but they do 
not know it. The Mountain People have kept so 
many of the basic human qualities that make for 
culture. They have no thirst for money, so they 
have leisure to become cultivated. They are real 
people. We cannot be so real as these contempla- 
tive people.’’ 


Mountain Speech and Song 


Mountain Speech and Song 


YE who in eternal youth 
Speak with a living and creative flood 
This universal English, and do stand 
Its breathing book; live worthy of that grand 
Heroic utterance,—parted, yet a whole, 
Far, yet unsevered,—children brave and free 
Of the great Mother-tongue, and ye shall be 
Lords of an Empire wide as Shakespeare’s soul, 
Sublime as Milton’s immemorial theme, 
And rich as Chaucer’s speech, and fair as Spenser’s dream. 


SIDNEY DOBELL 
America 


CHAPTER FIVE 
Mountan Speech and Song 


HE language of the Mountain People has 
been much maligned. It is neither careless 
nor degraded. Its difference from ‘‘ United 

States English’’ does not indicate a corrupt fall- 
ing away from modern speech, but rather a sur- 
vival from the speech of an older day. 

There are three aspects of the situation which 
it were well to distinguish. 

(1) In the Mountains our ears are not assailed 
by slang. The use of slang, the continual itera- 
tion of some pet phrase, usually picked up ready- 
made, to express widely different meanings, tend 
to impoverish the vocabulary and weaken dis- 
crimination in the use of words. From such 
faults the Mountain People are mostly free. 

(2) As the postal service goes everywhere, and 
books are occasionally found in far-off places, we 
must not expect to find everybody in the Moun- 
tains speaking alike. Even in the remote coves 
there is often a marked difference between the 
language of the grandmother and that of the 
grandchildren who have been ‘‘off’’ for some time 
at school. 

(3) So far as the pioneer circumstances persist, 
the pioneer language also survives. When new 


equipment and new activities come in, new words 
95 


96 The Land of Saddle-bags 


and new constructions naturally follow. Conse- 
quently, in the Mountains one finds language in all 
states of development. Except where it has suf- 
fered from an inundation of outside words, the 
language has a decided Shakespearean flavor. 
The Mountain man clings to Shakespearean words, 
not because he considers them better than modern 
words, but because he does not know the modern 
word. He does not need to know the newer vo- 
cabulary perhaps because his surroundings and his 
habits of thought are largely the same as they 
were in Shakespeare’s day. The requirements of 
life are with him still simple, as befits an outdoor 
people. 

Our magazine writers usually overdo the dialect 
in stories of Mountain life.*. They make their char- 
acters speak a mongrel jargon. It is true that 
Mountain speech is a development from Eliza- 
bethan English, in which an unusually large num- 
ber of the old words have survived. Yet even the 
most remote dweller is not confined solely to Eliza- 
bethan phraseology. Indeed, only enough of that 
phraseology has survived to give his speech a 
quaint and delightful flavor. It must be heard to 
be appreciated, yet some observations may be of 
interest. 

Strong preterites are much in use, like clum for 
climbed (Chaucer wrote it clomb, and Spenser 


1 Probably no other book pictures so accurately the Mountain 
People as Louise R. Murdoch’s Almetta of Gabriel’s Run. Pub- 
lished by Meridian Press, New York. 


Mountain Speech and Song NYA 


clomben), drug for dragged, wropt for wrapped 
(used by the courtly poet Lovelace), holp for 
helped (as in both Chaucer and Shakespeare and 
the King James Bible). The Mountaineers con- 
tinue this tradition in fotch, as preterite for fetch. 

On the other hand, they try to follow the modern 
trend, making a regular past tense end in ed. So 
they say throwed, growed, knowed, and even go 
out of their way to make a regular form by the 
addition of ed to the other, as ‘‘I was borned in 
April’’ or ‘‘He tosted us the hay.’’ Yet Spenser 
has a similar doubling of the ending in ‘‘loud he 
yelded.”’ 

They say fur with Sir Philip Sidney, and furder 
with Lord Bacon (which is, of course, as correct 
as murder, from murther). They go back to 
Chaucer and form plurals by adding es, especially 
in words ending in st; as postes, beastes, frostes, 
joistes (or jystes), waistes, nestes, ghostes, in 
which cases the es forms a second syllable. With 
this habit of making plurals, they treat new words 
with similar thoroughness: ‘‘I tell ye, man, trustes 
is wrong.’’ The habit transfers occasionally to 
verbs, ‘‘ Hit costes a lot.’’? ‘‘The rope twistes all 
up.’’ 

When he calls a cow contrarious, he has the au- 
thority of Milton, and surely in this age of 
woman’s rights he should not be blamed for ex- 
panding forefathers into foreparents. Afeard is 
more logical than afraid, and was preferred by 


98 The Land of Saddle-bags 


Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare also calls a salad a 
sallet, a bag a poke, and an excited state franzy. 
Caliban’s pied ninny, as also Milton’s ‘‘meadows 
trim with daisies pied,’’ come to mind when we 
hear a boy praise his pieded (or piedy) cow. 
Looking through the fence at the frisky calf, he 
remarks, ‘‘Hit’s an antic calf,’’ without knowing 
that Hamlet put ‘‘an antic disposition on.”’ 

The Mountain mother refers to her daughter’s 
skill as ‘‘Sally’s sleaght at buttermaking,’’ a use 
of the word found in Chaucer, and identical with 
Spenser’s ‘‘Y-carved with curious sleights.’’ 
When young folk in love with each other make 
serious plans, they are said to be talking. The 
same word is used by Regan in King Lear. 

Begone is in Shakespeare a kingly word spoken 
to an inferior. In the mountains it is used with a 
similar contempt, but only in speaking to dogs. 

Fletcher writes: 


I will give thee for thy food 
No fish that wseth in the mud. 


and in the mountains we hear ‘‘The sheep uses 
under the clifts,’’ or ‘‘The turkeys use in the 
wheat-patch.’’ 

Piers Plowman speaks of a heap of people, and 
Hakluyt uses allow for ‘‘assume.’’ 

Spenser writes yit and rimes it with wit. Per- 
haps no phrase is derided as more uncouth than 


Mountan Speech and Song 99 


mought for might, yet here again Spenser is our 
refuge. 


So sound he slept that naught mought him awake. 


When a mother asks her daughter to ‘‘swinge 
this chicken,’’ she does not know that the same 
courtly poet wrote: 


The scorching flame sore swinged all his face. 


When the father complains that the teacher 
‘‘spoke mighty short’’ to the child, he is not inten- 
tionally quoting from As You Like It. 

They still tole hogs with corn, and gorm their 
shoes with sticky mud. 

The dialect writers pounce with derisive hilarity 
upon such awkward and slovenly slips as sech, 
sence, agin, Scriptur, ventur, natur, yit, yander. 
The Queen-mother of Henry VII wrote seche for 
such, and it is evident from the writings of Nash, 
Beaumont, and other Elizabethans that all these 
were good usage at that time. 

The Mountain man uses kill up as Shakespeare 
does, and also live up, and teach up, as in teach up 
the children to have manners. The phrase—‘‘If 
you give your pigs a good start they’ll grow off— 
is similar surely to ‘‘off they go.’? The Mountain 
mother adds another: ‘‘Susie hain’t been much to 
school, but she learned off.’’ 


100 The Land of Saddle-bags 


Chaucer’s friend Gower writes of ‘‘a sighte of 
flowers.’’ The phrase still denotes abundance. 
We still rive an oak into shingles, and, like Prince 
Arthur, use a handkercher. 

They ‘‘git up afore day to git a soon start.’? In 
Antony and Cleopatra Shakespeare writes, ‘‘make 
your soonest haste.”’ 

‘We rode considerable peart and shunned the 
worst places.’’ Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s 
Dream commends the ‘‘pert and nimble spirit of 
youth.’’ 

‘‘Whar’s the pile of lumber that stood here?’’ 
“‘T’ve wasted it.’? Which means used or spent, 
not squandered. Celia in As You Like It says, ‘‘I 
like this place and willingly would waste my time 
in it.’’ 

A lad who has never heard of the ocean says, ‘‘I 
live on yan coast.’’ He carries a budget on his 
back, and spends his opinions as Othello did. He 
sees a snake quiled up, or warns you that the river 
is half-side deep. 

Besides the identified Shakespearean words that 
have come down like heirlooms, there are in com- 
mon use many quaint turns of speech that have an 
old-world dignity and decorum: 

‘<The child fell into the embers.’’ 

‘*1’d love to wash your dishes for a span.’’ 

‘‘Yes, I live here, but I don’t belong here. I’m 
just a hireling.’’ | 

‘‘The children love to prank with the dog.’’ 


— 


Mountain Speech and Song 101 


‘‘Grandsir (Grandsire) owns a big scope 0’ 
land.”’ 

‘‘Hit’s lasty water; stock can drink thar all 
summer.”’ 

‘‘That baby’s plumb purty, and hit’s as pleasant 
as the flowers.’’ 

‘“<They dug into the Indian grave and found a 
master pile 0’ bones.’’ 

‘‘The tree’s broke down, and gone to nought.’’ 

‘‘T’ve been very throng today.’’ (A Scottish 
usage. ) 

The magazine writers charge the Mountain Peo- 
ple with being slow and rather stupid, with a very 
limited vocabulary. Of course the vocabulary of 
invention and machinery is lacking because me- 
chanical contrivances for sale elsewhere are not 
commonly found in the Mountains. But the fact 
is that the Mountain People are, unconsciously of 
course, unusually skilful with language. 

They have one gift that modern speech has 
largely lost, the ability to make phrases and even 
words to fit the needs of the occasion; to express 
the fresh thought or feeling while it is fluttering 
over their minds. Their speech is still fluid. It 
is not yet congealed and fossilized into grammar. 

They make verbs out of nouns. ‘‘The children 
prank with the dog.”’ 

Then they go still further, and make an adverb 
out of the verb. ‘‘He did it wnthoughtedly.”’ 
‘*His mill war consid’able damified (damaged).’’ 


102 The Land of Saddle-bags 


We find the exact word with the same meaning in 
the Faérie Queene, and we all still use its nega- 
tive, indemnify. 

‘‘Ts the road passable?’’ ‘‘I don’t know. Some 
places the rains has gouted it out mightily, and 
undermined it.’’? ‘‘ Well, you’ll have to surround 
them places.’’ Each is vivid, picturesque, and, as 
it were, measured to order. 

‘*Liza is more talkier than Susie.”’ 

‘‘Log houses are a heap endurabler.’”’ 

- “He’s the workin’est man,’’ ‘‘the speakin’est 
man,’’ ‘‘the preachin’est man,’’ ‘‘the banjo- 
pickin’est man,’’ ‘‘the weavin’est woman.’’ ‘‘We 
had the hog-killin’est time’’ does not denote 
a butchering occasion; but the zest of hunting 
and killing, the anticipation of eating roast pork 
and sausage, and the social delight of the excited 
and happy crowd of noisy neighbors at hog-killing 
time suggest this epithet for any lively occasion. 

‘‘Hits good wheat, but not very yeldy on the 
ground.”’ 

““The boys was all banded up in the barn.’’ (In 
Timon of Athens ‘‘routs of people did about them 
band.’’) 

‘‘Sheep is natured like a deer; they use up 
high.”’ 

‘This land is right natured for corn.’’ 

‘*Bears air destructious, they kill hogs.’’ 

‘‘Our folks got naturalized to the doctor, aud 
like him.’’ 


Mountan Speech and Song  - 103 


‘‘T hain’t seen my sister in twenty years; I 
eain’t hardly memorize her.’’ 

“Tf it don’t disfurmsh ye none, I’ll pay ye 
later.’’ 

“Hit’ll take a right spell to moralze John 
Will.’’ 

‘‘He rewarded Bill.’? This means no gift to Bill, 
but a reward offered for his apprehension. 

‘‘T raised five sons, and none of ’em war ever 
warranted’’ (arrested on a warrant). 

‘‘Cora’s strong-minded; she ain’t afeard.”’ 

‘¢We didn’t have no fotch-on clothes when I was 
a-raisin’.’’ 

As wealth is the collective noun made from weal, 
and stealth is the thing one steals, and spilth what 
one spills, so filth in the mountains means the 
weeds or driftwood that fill up, and blowth is the 
mass of blossoms that blow. ‘‘There’s a good 
blowth on the fruit trees this year.’’ 

The venerable word buss (to kiss) has fallen 
into disrepute in the dictionaries. But it is still 
uncontaminated in the Mountains. A derivative 
from it is also found: bussy, a sweetheart. 

“He faulted her’’ (scolded). 

‘“‘He’s a main worker; he has breskit.’? We 
have a faded relic in ‘‘main strength.’’ Brisket 
we now use only in reference to an animal. We 
say of a man that he is ‘‘chesty,’’ though we do 
not usually apply this to his physical energy. 

We speak of a dress-pattern or a trousers-pat- 


104 The Land of Saddle-bags 


tern, meaning not the shape, but the material out 
of which it is to be made. So we need not be sur- 
prised at—‘‘He sawed him a house-pattern out of 
beech.’’ 

Their word-making or phrase-making often 
gives startling vividness. ‘‘Do you foller talkin’?’’ 
Meaning, is that your profession? or do you make 
a practice of it? 

‘*He’s been a-devillin’ me all morning.’’ 

‘“<They married different then, allers had a long 
graveyard prayer.’’ (At a funeral the preacher 
doubtless did ample justice to the deceased—and 
to his own reputation for eloquence.) 

‘‘He takes larnin’ easy. I reckon he’s capaci- 
tated to take all the larnin’ ye can give him.’’ 

‘‘He’s a leetle grain tetchy’’ (or tetchous), as 
was Richard the Third, whose mother said ‘‘tetchy 
and wayward was thy infancy.’’ 

‘‘Mammy tried to put the bridle on, but the mare 
whipt her out.’’ We use beat with a similar non- 
physical implication. 

‘“The moon fulls tonight.’’ 

‘«She’s the likeliest favored gal.”’ 

“The littl’un’s ashamed (bashful). She hain’t 
much manners.”’ 

‘‘Grannie’s been bedfast for a long time.’’ 

‘*Do you want in?”’ 

‘“We had a cedar churn, but it fell to staves.’’ 

‘*T aim to settle down,’’ as frequently in Shake- 
speare, 


—— ~  t 


Mountain Speech and Song (105 


‘‘Children grow up direcily.’’ 

‘‘T want to buy a pretty for my baby-child. I 
told her she should have her happy.’’ 

‘‘He’s a mighty common man’’ (affable, mingles 
with folk as an equal). 

When a girl pitched a tune too high, an observer, 
with a vision in mind of a plow running out of the 
ground, remarked, ‘‘She started it too shallow.’’ 

‘‘T rode to town for some iron and delft (iron 
pots and pans and dishes). 

The language of the Mountain People fre- 
quently shows an exactness of thinking that gives 
an artistic touch to their speech. On the train 
one inquires, ‘‘Is this your paper?’’ ‘‘No, hit 
belongs to this seat.’’ 

Susie, eight years old, on being asked, ‘‘ Was 
your new baby a boy?’’ replies very seriously, 
‘‘Yes, hit was a boy’’; then, after a pause, ‘‘and 
hit’s a boy yit.’’ 

“Tg that a gallon can?’’? ‘“No, not hardly, I 
reckon, but hit’ll hold quite a content.’’ 

This desire for exactness has given such ex- 
pressions as rifled-gun (often clipped to rifle-gun), 
rock-clift, ham-meat or ham-bacon, cow-brute, 
man-person, granny-woman, tooth-dentist, church- 
house, and biscuit-bread. Bread may mean corn- 
bread, or simply corn. ‘‘I’m clearin’ a field to 
raise my bread.’’ 

As in language everywhere, there are curious 
mutations. They take ‘‘y’’ from ‘‘yeast,’’ but add 


106 The Land of Saddle-bags 


it to ‘‘earn.’’? ‘‘Queer’’ becomes quar, and con- 
versely ‘‘care’’ becomes keer. ‘‘Chair’’ becomes 
cheer, ‘‘crop’’ turns to crap, and conversely 
‘‘wrap’’ becomes wrop. An ‘‘r’’ often gets into 
warter (water), orter (ought to), arter (after), 
and even invades proper names, as Cordle (Cau- 
dill) and Orsborn. 

We need not be surprised at ‘‘sarvice-berry’’ 
when the Faérie Queene has swarved for swerved, 
nor scorn their changing joist to jaste and join to 
june, when the super-elegance of Alexander Pope 
pronounced them in exactly the same way. 

For the pronoun ‘‘it,’’ the Chaucerian ‘‘hit’’ is 
still commonly used. But not always. An indefin- 
able instinct for euphony governs the choice. 
Probably this same artistic instinct for sound de- 
termines the choice between ‘‘there’’ and ‘‘thar,”’ 
‘‘where’’ and ‘‘whar,”’ ‘‘is’’ and ‘‘air,’’,and other 
locutions defiant of grammar. But the latter 
phrase is scarcely correct, for of grammar they 
are entirely unconscious. Here language is still 
spoken thought, not something written down and 
analyzed. 


There is one exception to this statement. The 
language of the ballads is handed down, as it were, 
in carved stone. It is chipped here and there, and 
occasionally we find puttified restorations, but as 
a whole the ballads are more or less sacrosanct 


— oa we wa ee _ —_ 


Mountain Speech and Song 107 


heirlooms handed down supposedly intact. They 
are not to be meddled with. Their words remain 
an outside thing, like a pearl in an oyster. The 
poetry is not assimilated or absorbed into the per- 
sonality of the singer. The language, therefore, 
remains petrified. 

Ballads are the poetry of primitive people. 
They have no individual author, but are the prod- 
uct of communal pride and joy in their common 
hero, who is often their common ancestor. Bal- 
lads could not arise in a cosmopolitan community. 
It must be homogeneous at least in racial or tribal 
feeling. There must be a unity of interest. There 
may be a lord in his castle and his retainers in 
hovels, but they are all kinsfolk. All are united 
in a common purpose and a common adventure. 
Probably all are bound together by a common 
danger, and all enjoy the common pleasures of the 
great outdoors. They are, at least, all vitally in- 
terested in a common exploit in which all feel that 
they have a share. One of them has ventured over 
the border and discomfited the enemy. If not one, 
perhaps several, but never an army, never an im- 
personal organization. The ballad is personal. It 
celebrates personal and individual adventures. 
Our champion, my forty-second cousin, perhaps, 
dared this deed. One of us, one from our midst, 
suffered this sorrow, or endured this bitter wrong. 
The ballad often tells of the exploits of a chief, 


108 The Land of Saddle-bags 


but the point of view is that of the common people. 
It gives their rather childish notions of the wealth, 
luxury, and happiness of their social superiors. 
These have ‘‘milk-white hands,’’ ‘‘cherry cheeks,’’ 
‘‘vellow hair,’’ ‘‘ivory combs,’’ ‘‘belts of gold.”’ 
Even their horses are shod with silver and gold. 
Their refreshment is always the blood-red wine. 
Their companions or attendants are always three, 
or seven, or twenty-four. 

The old English ballads (it is noteworthy that 
almost all are in the Scottish form) have been 
handed down from singer to singer without either 
book or manuscript. In weathering thus the 
storms of time, some of the ballads have suffered 
a sea change. In the ‘‘Turkish Lady,’’ for ex- 
ample, Gilbert a Becket (father of the martyred 
archbishop of Canterbury) had already become 
‘‘Beichan.’’ This the Mountain singers have fur- 
ther transmuted to ‘‘Bateman.’’ They are rather 
shaky on ethnology, so the Turk is referred to as 
‘“‘The Turkish.’’ ‘‘A lord of high degree’’ is no 
longer a familiar object, consequently, in the 
fourth stanza the phrase gets a twist. The second 
line of the sixth stanza is evidently a mere jingle 
of words, inserted to fill up the line forgotten by 
the singer or by one of the singer’s ancestors. Not 
being very familiar with gold, they make, in stanza 
thirteen, an extravagant valuation of the lady’s 
belt. 


Mountain Speech and Song 109 





Turkish Lady. 


a 


_—— 
1. ae Bateman was a no- ble lord, He thought him- 


i= ae 


self of high de-gree; He could not rest nor con- 








tent-ed Un-til he had voy - aged a-cross the sea. 


2. He sailed east and he sailed westward 
Until he reached the Turkish shore; 
And there he was taken and put in prison; 
He lived in hopes of freedom no more. 


3. The Turkish had one only daughter, 
The fairest creature eye ever did see. 
She stole the keys to her father’s prison, 
Saying, “Lord Bateman I’ll set free.” 


4, “Have you got houses? have you got lands, sir? 
Or do you live at a high degree? 
What will you give to the fair young lady 
That out of prison will set you free?” 


5. “T’ve got houses, and I’ve got lands, love— 
Half of Northumberland belongs to me, 
And I'll give it all to the Turkish Lady 
If she from prison will set me free.” 


6. “Seven long years I’ll make a vow, sir, 
Seven more by thirty-three, 
And if you’ll marry no other lady, 
No other man shall marry me.” 


110 


10. 


12. 


13. 


14. 


The Land of Saddle-bags 


Then she took him to her father’s harbor, 
And gave to him a ship of fame; 
“Farewell, farewell, to you, Lord Bateman, 
I fear I never shall see you again.” 


For seven long years she kept her vow, sir 
And seven more by thirty-three. 

She gathered all her gay, fine clothing, 
Saying, “Lord Bateman I’ll go see.” 


. She sailed east and she sailed westward, 


Until she reached the English shore; 
And when she came to Lord Bateman’s castle, 
She lighted down before the door. 


“Are these Lord Bateman’s gay, fine houses? 
And is his lordship here within ?” 

“Oh yes, oh yes,” cried the proud young porter, 
“He has just taken his young bride in.” 


. “Go tell him to send me a slice of cake, 


And draw me a glass of the strongest wine, 
And not to forget the fair young lady, 
That did release him when close confined.” 


“What news, what news, my proud young porter, 
What news, what news have you brought to me?” 
“Oh, there is the fairest of all young ladies 
That ever my two eyes did see.” 


“She has got rings on every finger, 

And on one of them she has got three; 
And she’s as much gold around her middle 
As would buy Northumberland of thee.” 


“She tells you to send her a slice of cake, 
And draw her a glass of the strongest wine, 
And not forget the fair young lady 

That did release you when close confined.” 


eo i nes 


an. 


Mountain Speech and Song (jugs 


15. Lord Bateman rose from where he was sitting, 
His face did look as white as snow, 
Saying, “If she is the Turkish Lady, 
With her, love, I’m bound to go.” 


16. Oh, then, he spoke to the young bride’s mother, 
“She’s none the better nor worse for me; 
She came to me on a horse and saddle, 
And she may go back in a carriage and three.” 


“Your daughter came here on a horse and saddle 
And she may return in a chariot free, 

And [ll go marry the Turkish Lady 

That crossed the roaring sea for me.” 


In the first stanza of ‘‘Lord Thomas and Fair 
Elender,’’ we find the Chaucerian phrase, ‘‘rede 
me a riddle.’’ This has survived because of its 
euphony, not because of any uncertainty as to his 
preference on the part of the hero. The older 
ballad makers always admired yellow or golden 
hair. ‘‘The brown girl,’’ a brunette, though she is 
rich, is not a favorite, for personal charm, like 
individual prowess, always ranks high with the 
pioneer. The second line of the third stanza calls 
attention to Lord Thomas’s ‘‘waiters.’?’ Com- 
pletely ignoring the bridegroom, our common 
usage at weddings alludes to a certain individual 
as ‘‘best man.’’ Mountain usage calls him 
‘‘waiter.’? The usual meaning of ‘‘wait’’ in 
Shakespeare’s day was to attend: ‘‘We’ll wait 
upon your grace.”’ 


112 The Land of Saddle-bags 





Lord Thomas and Fair Blender. 


1.0 moth-er, O moth-er, come redeme a rid-dle, Come, 


Psy Nasled NOU ed “Ehud, Se eee 
—s{_— eo eo ees ATE a 

rere a SA wemmeeiaurer sr n= 

rene cremutecomn yr areata“ may peee qr ose 


e@ 
rid-dle it both in one, Whother I shall ad fair 


$35) 12 See 


- len - OES Or bring the brown girl honest 











2. The brown girl, she has house and lands, 
Fair Elender, she has none; 
Therefore, dear child, under my consent, 
Go bring the brown girl home. 


3. He dressed himself in scarlet red; 
His waiters all in green; 
And in every town that he rode through 
They took him to be some king. 


4. He rode up to fair Elender’s gate; 
He dingled so loud on the ring,} 
There’s no one so ready as fair Elender 
To rise and welcome him in. 


5. What news, what news, Lord Thomas? she said, 
What news have you brought unto me? 
I come to ask you to my wedding, 
The brown girl the bride to be. 


6. Mother, O Mother, come rede me a riddle, 
Come riddle it both in one, 
Whether to go to Lord Thomas’ wedding 
Or tarry this day at home. 


1 Before doorbells were invented, a visitor could make consider- 
able noise at the front door, dingling the large ring in its socket. 


es 


10. 


a a 


12. 


13. 


14. 


Mountan Speech and Song 


Many a one may be your friend, 
And many a one your foe; 

If I should advise you to do best, 
It’s tarry this day at home. 


Many a one may be my friend, 

And many a one my foe; 

T’ll venture, V’ll venture my own heart’s blood 
To Lord Thomas’ wedding I'll go. 


She dressed herself in satin so white, 
And her waiting maids in green, 

And in every town that she rode through 
They took her to be some queen. 


She rode up to Lord Thomas’ gate, 

She dingled so loud on the ring, 

There’s no one so ready as Lord Thomas himself 
To rise and welcome her in. 


He took her by the lily-white hand, 
He led her through the hall, 

And seated her at the table’s head 
Amongst the nobles all. 


Is this your bride, Lord Thomas, she said, 
That looks so wonderful brown, 

When you might have married as fair a lady 
As ever the sun shined on. 


Dispraise her not, fair Ellen, he said, 
Dispraise her not unto me, 

For I think more of your little finger 
Than I do of her whole body. 


The brown girl had a little pen-knife; * 
It was both keen and sharp; 

Between the short ribs and the long 
She pierced fair Elender’s heart. 


118 


1A small sharp knife used to cut a goose quill for writing. 


114 The Land of Saddle-bags 


15. What’s the matter, fair Ellen? he said. 
You look so pale and wan; 
You once did bear as good a color 
As ever the sun shined on. 


16. Oh, are you blind, Lord Thomas? she said, 
Or can’t you so very well see? 
Don’t you see my own heart’s blood 
Come trinkling down my knee? 


17. He took the brown girl by the hand 
And led her over the hall, 
And with his sword he cut off her head 
And pitched it against the wall. 


18. He put the handle against the wall, 
The point against his breast, 
Adieu, adieu to three dear loves, 
God send them all to rest. 


19. Go dig my grave both long and large, 
And dig it wide and deep, 
And bury fair Elender in my arms, 
The brown girl at my feet. 


Perhaps the most famous of all the ballads is 
‘‘Barbara Allen.’’ It has sung itself with plain- 
tive sweetness into the hearts of many generations. 
In this ballad we note that the English ‘‘month of 
May’”’ retains its alliterative hold, though the 
Mountain season is much earlier. The death-bell 
also remains intact, because of its melancholy 
appeal, though of course this Catholic custom has 
never been practiced in the Mountains. The ‘‘west 
countree,’’ however, is changed to the western 
States. 


CE = 


” 


ars 


Mountain Speech and Song 15 





Barbara Allen. 


prs 3: 
Glpioete ha 2. 


1. In Scarlet Town, where I was born, There was a fair maid dwelling, Hade 








2. All in the merry month of May, 
When the green buds they were swelling, 
Sweet William came from the western states 
And courted Barbara Allen. 


3. It was all in the month of June 
When all things they were blooming, 
Sweet William on his death-bed lay, 
For the love of Barbara Allen. 


4, He sent his servant to the town, 
Where Barbara was a-dwelling, 
My master is sick and sent for you 
If your name is Barbara Allen. 


5, And death is painted on his face, 
And o’er his heart is stealing, 
Then hasten away to comfort him, 
O lovely Barbara Allen. 


6. So, slowly, slowly, she got up, 
And slowly she came nigh him; 
And all she said when she got there, 
Young man, I think you are dying. 


7. Oh, yes, I’m sick, and very sick, 
For death is on me dwelling; 
No better, no better I never can be, 
If I can’t get Barbara Allen. 


116 


The Land of Saddle-bags 





8. 


10. 


nae 


12. 


13. 


14. 


15. 


Oh, yes, you are sick, and very sick, 
And death is on you dwelling, 

No better, no better you never will be, 
For you can’t get Barbara Allen. 


Oh, don’t you remember in yonder town 
When you were at the tavern 

You drank a health to the ladies all ’round, 
And slighted Barbara Allen? 


Oh, yes, I-remember in yonder town, 
In yonder town a-drinking, 

I gave a health to the ladies all ’round, 
But my heart to Barbara Allen. 


He turned his pale face to the wall, 
And death was with him dealing, 
Adieu, adieu to my friends all around, 
Be kind to Barbara Allen. 


As she was on her highway home, . 
The birds they kept a-singing, 
They sang so clear they seemed to say, 

“Hard-hearted Barbara Allen.” 


As she was walking o’er the fields, 
She heard the death bell knelling, 
And every stroke did seem to say 
“Hard-hearted Barbara Allen.” 


She looked to the east and she looked to the west, 
She spied his corpse a-coming. 

Lay down, lay down, the corpse of elay, 

That I may look upon him. 


The more she looked, the more she mourned, 
Till she fell to the ground a-erying, 
Saying, Take me up and carry me home, 
For I am now a-dying. 


Mountan Speech and Song 117 


16. O Mother, O Mother, go make my bed, 
Go make it long and narrow; 
Sweet William died for pure, pure love, 
And I shall die for sorrow. 


17. O Father, O Father, go dig my grave, 
Go dig it long and narrow; 
Sweet Wiliam died for me today, 
T’ll die for him tomorrow. 


18. She was buried in the old church yard, 
And he was buried a-nigh her. 
On William’s grave there grew a red rose, 
And on Barbara’s grew a green brier. 


19. They grew to the top of the old church wall, 
Till they couldn’t grow any higher; 
They lapped and they tied in a true lover’s knot, 
And the rose grew around the brier. 


Many of the ballads have a refrain in which all 
the auditors may join. Sometimes the refrain has 
no connection with the story, as in the short lines 
of ‘‘The Two Sisters.’’ ‘‘Bowee down!’’ and 
‘‘Bow and balance to me!’’? are a remnant from 
an old dance jingle, which was occasionally sung 
by dancers even after the music was furnished by 
the fiddle. ‘‘Bowee’’ was originally ‘‘Bow ye,’’ 
but it has dropped the ‘‘y’’ and become ‘‘bowee,”’ 
as is common in Scottish familiar speech. The 
triple repetition of the first line in every stanza is 
a frequent characteristic of ballads,—it gives in- 
tensity to the tale. 


118 The Land of Saddle-bags 


The Two Sisters. 
(The Mill-dam of Binnorie.) 













ar a eS -— borates bead timer Pager i ee 
yo —S- — -- — 

E a ee rn 
1. There lived an old lord by the Northorn Sea, Bow-ee down! There 





= Ss <5, 9 9 oo, 0 P= on 
gs a mee ee seems 





Wied an old lord by the bioerkal Sec Bow and balance to me! There 


—y—F- 


Gave Ta 





F ape af 








ees a eee Le 


Pll be true to my love, If my lovey’ll be true to me! 


2. A young man came a-courting there, 

Bowee down! 

A young man came a-courting there, 
Bow and balance to me! 

A young man came a-courting there, 

And he made choice of the youngest fair. 
I'll be true to my love, 
If my love’ll be true to me! 


3. He brought this youngest a beaver hat, 
And the oldest sister didn’t like that. 


4. As they walked down to the water’s brim, 
The oldest pushed the youngest in. 


5. O sister, O sister, lend me your hand 
And you may have my house and land. 


6. She floated down to the miller’s dam, 
The miller drew her safe to land. 


— 
a= (ee 


Mountain Speech and Song eM, 


7. And off of her fingers took five gold rings, 
Then into the water he plunged her again. 


8. The miller was hanged on a gallows so high, 
The oldest sister there close by. 


Ballads, being the literature of the uncultured, 
naturally seize upon domestic tragedies more often 
than upon joys,—do we not see the same avidity 
today in the newspapers?—and gypsies like those 
in The Gypsy Laddie have always been fascinat- 
ing, partly because of their mysterious coming and 
going. 

The broken rimes of the seventh stanza indicate 
that the singer (or some singer among her an- 
cestors) forgot the lines, and perhaps condensed 
two stanzas into one. 


The Gypsy Laddie. 


£0 Stare amie a See 


1. Oh, when Lord ST ae came home, En-quir-ing for ,his 





SEDO SEARS FON —F— POL AIS AE RE, A ENE “ES 
i ees Se jae 


-6- 
la - dy, The an-swer that they made to him, She’s gone with the 











CaN A SOME LADIES LRLLINY 7 y ENOLASE ONS 
j= = 7a AC” Ra” TA 
NTE COP eh 2 
sy Dav - y. All 3 lip - to tal - ly 
eM! Oy SL AY SSS 
EN ITO 40) as ore eames PBN “Uae ano caeaae || 








do-ney, Hair, Rea All : lip '- to la - dy. 


120 


The ballad of ‘‘The Green Willow Tree’’ does 
not go back beyond the time of Queen Elizabeth. 
An English variant gives the Captain as Sir Wal- 
ter Raleigh, and his ship’s name ‘‘The Golden 
Doubtless Vanitee became Vanitree, 
then the first part of the word was variously 
changed to ‘‘make sense’’ to ‘‘The Mary Golden 


Vanity.”’ 


1 Doney is a Mountain word for sweetheart, doubtless from the 


The Land of Saddle-bags 


. It’s he caught up his old grey horse, 


And he caught up his pony; 
He rode all night and he rode all day 
Till he overtook his doney.? 


. It’s come go back, my dearest dear, 


It’s come go back, my honey, 
It’s come go back, my dearest dear, 
And you never shall lack for money. 


. I won’t go back, my dearest dear, 


Nor I won’t go back, my honey; 
I wouldn’t give a kiss from my gypsy’s lips 
For you and all your money. 


. It’s go pull off those snow-white gloves 


A-made of Spanish leather, 
And give to me your lily-white hand 
And bid me farewell forever. 


. It’s she pulled off those snow-white gloves 


A-made of Spanish leather, 
And gave to him her lily-white hand 
And bade him farewell forever. 


. I once did have so many fine things, 


Fine feather-beds and money; 
But now my bed is made of hay 
And the gypsies a-dancing around me. 


Spanish donna. 


Mountain Speech and Song $721 





Tree’’ (Merry), ‘‘The Green Willow Tree,’’ and 
‘‘The Weeping Willow Tree.’’ In one variant the 
‘*Golden’’ has been transferred to the Turkish 
ship, ‘‘The Golden Silveree.’? In one version the 
Sailor Boy refrains from boring holes in the false 
Captain’s ship for the sake of the crew; in an- 
other, for the sake of the Captain’s sUvibaieene. 
who is supposedly on board; and in a third, for 
both ‘‘your daughter and your men.’’ 


The Green Willow Tree. 
.(The Golden Vanity.) 


Gia fs Ss 


1. There was a ship sailed for the North A-mer - i- kee, Cry - ing 








North A-mer-i-kee, And she went by the name of the 


=e eee, 


Green Wil-low Tree, And she sailed from the Low-lands ‘al 


2. She’d only been a-sailing for two weeks or three— 
Crying, O the lonesome Lowlands low— 1 
She’d only been a-sailing for two weeks or three, 
Till she was overtaken by the Turkish Reveree ? 
As she sailed from the Lowlands low. 


1 Lowlands usually referred to Holland. 
2 Doubtless a form of the Scottish word for robber, reiver. 


122 The Land of Saddle-bags 





3. Then said the captain, What shall we do? 
Crying, O the lonesome Lowlands low! 
Then said the captain, What shall we do? 
The Turkish Reveree will surely cut us in two! 
As we sail from the Lowlands low. 


4. Up spake a sailor boy, What will you give to me, 
Crying, O the lonesome Lowlands low! 
Up spake a sailor boy, What will you give me, 
If I will go and sink for you the Turkish Reveree 
As we sail from the Lowlands low? 


5. Ill give you gold, I’ll give you fee, 
Crying, O the lonesome Lowlands low! 
T’ll give you gold, V’ll give you fee, 
And my only daughter for your wedded wife to be! 
As we sailed from the Lowlands low. 


6. The lad leapt down and away swam he, 
Crying, O the lonesome Lowlands low! 
He fell upon his breast and away swam he, 
And he swam till he came to the Turkish Reveree, 
As we sailed from the Lowlands low. 


7. Then out of his pocket an instrument he drew, 
Crying, O the lonesome Lowlands low! 
Then out of his pocket an instrument he drew, 
And he bored nine holes for to let the water through, 
As we sailed from the Lowlands low. 


8. There were some playing cards and some playing checks, 
Crying, O the lonesome Lowlands low! 
There were some playing cards and some playing checks, 
And before they cleared the boards, they were in water to 
their necks! 
As we sailed from the Lowlands low. 


9. Then the lad turned back and away swam he, 
Crying, O the lonesome Lowlands low! 
Then he fell upon his breast and away swam he, 
And he swam till he came to the Green Willow Tree, 
As we sailed from the Lowlands low. 


Mountain Speech and Song Leo 


10. Cried he, Kind Captain, I have done your decree, 
Crying, O the lonesome Lowlands low! 
Cried he, Kind Captain, I have done your decree, 
Now take me on board ere I perish in the sea! 
As we sailed from the Lowlands low. 


11. Nay, nay, sailor boy, I’ll never take you on board, 
Crying, O the lonesome Lowlands low! 
Nay, nay, sailor boy, [ll never take you on board; 
Never will I be to you as good as my word! 
As we sailed from the Lowlands low. 


12. ’Tis only the respect that I have for your crew, 
Crying, O the lonesome Lowlands low! 
’Tis only the respect that I have for your crew 
Or I’d sink your ship and you with it too} 
As we sailed from the Lowlands low. 


13. Then he fell upon his breast and away swam he, 
Crying, O the lonesome Lowlands low! 
He fell upon his breast and away swam he; 
Adieu, adieu to the Green Willow Tree! 
Adieu to the Lowlands low. 


Either the passage of time or change in environ- 
ment sometimes led to an interesting change in a 
ballad as sung in the Mountains. For example, in 
‘¢The Demon Lover,’’ which space does not permit 
us to include, the ship carpenter becomes the 
house-carpenter, a more familiar occupation. The 
lover’s cloven hoofs are omitted and nothing re- 
mains in the ballad to show that he is a demon. 
This is also a good example of the ‘‘answering bal- 
lad,’’ which probably grew out of the ‘‘flyting’’ 
(Scottish for scolding) ballad, in which two per- 
sons conduct a sort of debate and ‘‘answer back.’’ 

‘‘Come, all ye Fair and Tender Ladies,’’ is 


124 The Land of Saddle-bags 


more of a song than a ballad. In the first stanza 
the word ‘‘court’’ is used, not in the sense of 
actively wooing, but it indicates a gracious and 
courtly reception of their attentions. 


Gome, all ye Fair and apne Ladies. 


ines aes 


1. Come, all ye fair and ten - der See dies, Take warning 


o ae Fat 


how you court young men, They’re like a star in rae sum - mer 


Pepe a Pogiace 


morn - ing., They'll first ap-pear and then they’re. gone, 














2. They’ll tell to you some loving story 
And make you think that they love you true; 
Straightway they’ll go and court some other, 
Oh, that is the love they have for you. 


3. If I had known before I courted, 
That love had been so hard to gain 
T’d have locked my heart in a box of golden, 
And fastened it up with a silver chain. 


4, I wish I were some little sparrow, 
And I had wings and I could fly, 
I’d fly away to my false true-love, 
And when he’d talk I would be by. 


5. But as it is I am no sparrow, 
I have no wings, nor ean I fly, 
I sit down here in a grief and sorrow 
And try to pass my troubles by. 


Moonshine and Feuds 


Moonshine and Feuds 


HE North of Ireland was settled by 

Seotchmen who had been imported by 
James I.—They learned how to make po- 
teen in little stills after the Irish fashion. 
By-and-by these Scotch-Irish fell out with 
the British government, and large bodies 
of them emigrated to America.—They were 
a fighting race—They brought with them, 
too, an undying hatred of excise laws, and 
a spirit of unhesitative resistance to any 
authority that sought to enforce such laws. 


KEPHART 
Our Southern Highlanders 





CHAPTER SIX 
Moonshine and Feuds 


66¢ 


HY do those Mountaineers make moon- 

shine?’’ Well, why did your great- 
great-grandparents make it? They 
turned their barley and corn into whiskey, their 
fruit into brandy, and their blackberries into 
cordial. That was as regular a part of a thrifty 
housewife’s program as the canning of fruit and 
vegetables is today. Somewhere along the lne 
between these highly respected ancestors and 
yourself the practice of making New England 
rum or Virginia brandy was discontinued as not 
quite suitable for a deacon or a vestryman. Gradu- 
ally these other products fell into disfavor also, 
until within a generation or so even the old cider 
barrel has given place to canned cider. Perhaps 
you remember that your dear old Grandmother 
insisted as long as she lived that home-made black- 
berry cordial never did a mite of harm to any- 
body. 

The most obvious answer to any question about 
Mountain usage is, it is a survival from the older 
day. It has come down among us comparatively 
unchanged, while on your side of the Mountains 
the old custom has been worn away in the con- 
flicting currents of modern life. 


But there is another answer to the query why 
127 


128 The Land of Saddle-bags 


the Mountain People so universally make moon- 
shine. It is a startling answer. They do not. 
Very few Mountain men make moonshine. Per- 
haps as great a proportion of Mountain men are 
engaged in distilling illicit whiskey as the pro- 
portion of St. Louis or New York men who are 
engaged in burglary. It is unfair in each case to 
bring the charge against the entire population. 
Many counties in the Mountains were dry be- 
fore their state voted against whiskey. Mitchell 
County voted dry long before the more ‘‘civilized”’ 
parts of North Carolina. 

We might go further. Even in the case of those 
who do run a moonshine still the comparison is 
unjust. Making one’s own moonshine may be a 
crime against the far-off government at Washing- 
ton, but by Hector! it is not an offence against 
your neighbor’s property or his life. The moon- 
shiner probably pays his debts, is honest in his 
business dealings, and is a sympathetic and help- 
ful neighbor, ‘‘a mighty ’ceommodatin’ man.’’ No 
one can say that of the burglar. 

In the Mountains the morality of any course of 
action is still judged individualistically. Such con- 
siderations do not include its general influence 
upon the community. This explains why it is 
that the majority of a community, while disap- 
proving the moonshiner’s action, look upon it 
merely as a matter of personal conduct—like 
dancing, or playing the fiddle. Such things are not 


Moonshine and Feuds VG os Ph 


seemly in church members, but they are none of 
our business. There is, of course, in many in- 
stances considerable fear of angering these bold 
men that defy the law. But back of this fear is 
the common feeling that it is not our business; and 
a man that interferes in another man’s business 
deserves whatever he gets. Minding one’s own 
business is a fundamental virtue of the Mountain 
People. 

Let us ask a disapproving citizen how many 
moonshine stills there are in his community. ‘‘Oh, 
there ain’t scarcely none in this deestrict.’’ 

‘“‘Of course. But how many are there between 
Bad Creek and Wolf Mountain?’’ 

He begins to count. ‘‘ Well, there’s one, two, 
three, four—there’s about seventeen, I reckon. 
Of course I don’t know, pint-blank, ary one; but 
IT reckon, without an accident, a body could find 
’em.’’? If you are neither a revenue officer nor 
‘Cone o’ them writin’ fellers that jest puorely hes 
about us folks for money,’’ it is not improbable 
that you may get a moonshiner to express his 
opinion. Mr. Horace Kephart, having established 
his honesty in both these particulars, gives us a 
fair specimen: 


“You think the Government tax on whiskey is an imposi- 
tion... . Hit is. . . . Revenue costs a dollar and ten cents on 
twenty cents’ worth o’ liquor; and that’s robbing the people 
with a gun to their faces. ... Whiskey means more to us 


130 The Land of Saddle-bags 





mountain folk than hit does to folks in town, whar thar’s 
drug-stores and doctors. Let ary thing go wrong in the fam- 
ily—fever, or snake-bite, or somethin’—and we can’t git a 
doctor up hyar less’n three days; and it costs scand’lous. The 
only medicines we-uns has is yerbs, which customarily ain’t no 
good ’thout a leetle grain o’ whiskey. . . . Now, yan’s my field 
o’ corn. I gather the corn and shuck hit and grind hit my 
own self, and the woman she bakes us a pone o’ bread to eat 
—and I don’t pay no tax, do 1? Then why can’t I make some 
o’ my corn into pure whiskey to drink, without payin’ tax? I 
tell you, ’tain’t fair, this way the Government does! But, when 
all’s said and done, the main reason for this ‘moonshining,’ as 
you-uns calls it, is bad roads.” 

“Bad roads!” I exclaimed. “What the—” 

“Jest thisaway: From hyar to the railroad is seventeen 
miles, with two mountains to cross; and you’ve seed that road. 
Seven hundred pounds is all the load a good team ean haul 
over that road when the weather’s good. ... Hit takes three 
days to make the round trip, less’n you break an axle, and 
then hit takes four. . . . The only farm produce we-uns ean sell 
is corn. You see for yourself that corn can’t be shipped outen 
hyar. .. . Corn juice is about all we can tote around over the 
country and git cash money for. Why, man, that’s the only 
way some folks has o’ payin’ their taxes!” 

“But aside from the work and worry,’ I remarked, “there is 
the danger of being shot in this business!” 

“Oh, we-uns don’t lay that up agin the Government. Hit’s 
as fair for one as ’tis for t’other. When a revenuer comes 
sneakin’ around, why, whut he gits, or whut we-uns gits, that’s 
a ‘fortune of war,’ as the old sayin’ is.” ” 


1 Horace Kephart: Our Southern Highlanders, Outing Publish- 
ing Company, 1913, p. 121. This is the most interesting book on 
the subject, and for the ground it covers, the most detailed and 
accurate. 


——— ee | ee. 


Moonshine and Feuds DN a Ree aI 


The operation of distilling whiskey has in recent 
years become as well known in the most favored 
districts as in the Mountains. The process in the 
Mountains, if not simpler, is at least managed 
with simpler and cruder apparatus. A retort is 
often made from a large iron kettle, used outdoors 
on wash days and in soap-making and hog-scald- 
ing seasons. A small inverted barrel is fitted 
snugly into this kettle. A pipe is inserted into 
an augur hole in the bottom (now the top) of the 
still, and this pipe is bent into a spiral to convey 
the vapors through a barrel of cold running water. 

Corn is moistened and kept warm till it sprouts. 
It is then dried and carried, usually by night, to a 
hittle tub mill to be ground secretly, for grinding 
such corn is a federal offense. From this ‘‘sweet 
meal’’ a mash is made with hot water. To this 
some yeasty material is added and fermentation 
begins. For more than a week it must be kept 
just warm enough to ferment. (In the poor 
shelters many a batch ‘‘chills down”’ and is lost.) 
After it ferments, this ‘‘beer’’ is poured into the 
still, the fire lighted, and the vapors start through 
the copper spiral pipe. Cooled by the running 
water surrounding the ‘‘worm,’’ the vapors con- 
dense into a liquid called ‘‘singlings’’ which drips 
or runs into a receptacle. After the ‘‘run’’ is 
finished, the still is emptied and the singlings 
poured in it to be distilled a second time into 
‘*doublings,’’ which are thus freed from the rank 


132 The Land of Saddle-bags 


oils and other impurities. While still warm, the 
whiskey is put into jugs and carried away for 
immediate sale. 

The making of moonshine is sleepless, nerve- 
racking work, and produces comparatively little 
return for the long days and nights of strain. It 
is a last resource to get money in order to pay 
taxes, or a persistent doctor, or a yet more im- 
portunate lawyer. ‘‘Hit’s a mighty oneasy way 
for a man to yearn him some cash money, but 
looks like we hain’t much choice up in this rough 
country.’’ This latter adjective is applied to the 
geography, not to the people. There is no shame, 
no sense of guilt in making or selling this 
‘‘blockade’’ whiskey. For prudential reasons, of 
course, the still and the liquor must be kept con- 
cealed. There are always men in the neighbor- 
hood that might give information to the sheriff, 
not usually for a reward, but to satisfy some 
grievance or grudge against the ‘‘blockader.’’ 
This term, by the way, is fully as common as 
- moonshine’? and ‘‘moonshiner.’’? The caution, 
the excitement, the danger of running a boat 
through an enemy’s blockade, is similar enough to 
tha experiences incurred in illicit distilling to 
make the term ‘‘blockading”’ entirely suitable. 

The liquor is sometimes offered for sale in the 
vicinity, but in many cases it is carried over the 
mountain at night on paths too steep for most 
of us in daylight. Occasionally the thirsty neigh- 


Moonshine and Feuds too 


bors are invited to buy. The method of adver- 
tising is probably not included among the activities 
of the most approved publicity agencies. If you 
happened to be wandering on the mountain side 
where it was ‘‘rough,’’ you might—or you might 
not—notice a twig or bush that had apparently 
been thoughtlessly cut by somebody trying the 
edge of his knife, and then thrown down in the path. 
But the enlightened one would follow the direction 
of its stem, and in due time find a succession of 
bushes, each pointing the thirsty traveler onwards 
to the desired haven. This reminds us of the 
saying current in Shakespeare’s day: ‘‘Good wine 
needs no bush.’’ But the bush that advertised the 
wine was probably not used in the same fashion. 

Not only is it important that the still be hidden, 
it must also be located near a good spring, which 
can furnish cold water to cool the copper worm. 
This necessity for cold water rules out many 
places that would be entirely safe from observa- 
tion or access. The smoke, the smell, and even the 
taste of the water in the brook, would publish 
undesirable facts, so the still must be located as 
far from habitation and travel as possible. Away 
up under a ‘‘clift’’ a spring must be selected that 
flows under an impenetrable thicket of laurel 
(rhododendron), or among locust and’ blackberry 
briers, in a spot where no wood cutters will be 
going about, nor any man looking for his stray 
hogs. 


134 The Land of Saddle-bags 


The habit of tippling or dramming is not un- 
common. But the men that drink heavily do so 
only on great occasions which they ‘‘celebrate’’ 
by drinking steadily until completely intoxicated. 
They celebrate on Christmas, election day, or any 
other day that strikes them as worthy of such 
exuberant attention. But such conduct meets the 
disapproval of good citizens. ‘‘I call sich as that 
mighty sorry doin’s.’’ ‘‘Hit’s no-caount fellers 
that follers drinkin’ and drammin’.’’ ‘‘They drink 
awhile an then they gits to quarr’lin’ an shootin’. 
Seems like we Mountain folks hain’t got good 
sense.’’ This confession is remarkable in two 
respects. The man making it has excellent sense 
and sound judgment. It is also noteworthy for 
the consciousness of solidarity it reveals— ‘‘we 
Mountain folks.’? In most places such a com- 
mentator would express the gulf that he feels to 
be between himself and such unworthy people. He 
would make clear the difference between himself 
and them. But the sense of loyalty to kith and 
kin is so strong in the Mountains that the good 
man often expresses himself as sharing the guilt 
and folly of those that have no kinship nor claim 
upon him, except that he and they are all Mountain 
men. 

I once asked a County Judge about the attitude 
women take towards liquor. He said, ‘‘ Well, 
more’n likely they wouldn’t drink with you, but 
if I were to take a bottle along, I reckon most of 


Moonshine and Feuds «185 


the women between here and Coal Creek would 
take a drink with me.’’ Possibly a majority of the 
women of his own age in that district might take a 
drink, but the Judge’s estimate was mere guess 
work, for he himself was known to be ‘‘mighty 
pizen agin whiskey.’’ Whenever I have led up to 
the subject, the opinion of the women voluntarily 
expressed has been either regret or indignation at 
the ravages of whiskey. With a mild, scarcely 
protesting pathos, a mother remarks, ‘‘Three of 
my boys has been shot to death; all, ye might say, 
by whiskey.’’ Another, with an edge to her tone, 
says, ‘‘Them men that makes whiskey, and sells it 
to our boys—I wish I was on the jury, I’d pene- 
tentiar’ ’em every time.’’ Then with a gleam 
of fire in her eyes she drops her voice, ‘‘ I wouldn’t 
keer if they was in the graveyard.’’ Or perhaps, 
with a rather unhopeful touch of fatalism, ‘‘I wish 
to the Lord we could get shet of the whiskey.’’ 

It might naturally be expected, in a country 
where so many men carry weapons, that heavy 
drinking would result in numerous ‘‘frays.’’ This 
is the case, and these frays generally prove fatal. 
But even in the roughest sections, public opinion 
is setting more and more strongly against such 
outrage against the community. ‘‘Hit used to 
be,’? said a Judge, ‘‘that when a man killed 
another, all his friends rushed in and went on 
his bail. But now the sympathy’s all with the 
corpse,”’ 


136 The Land of Saddle-bags 





In writing of feuds and of the conditions of the 
country in which feuds exist, Horace Kephart 
says: * 

In my own county, and all those adjoining it, there has been 
only one case of highway robbery, and only one of murder for 
money, so far as I can learn, in the past forty years. 

The most hideous feature of the feud is the shooting down 
of unarmed or unwarned men. Assassination, in our modern 
eyes, is the last and lowest infamy of a coward. Such it truly 
is when committed in the civilized society of our day. But in 
studying primitive races, or in going back along the line of our 
own ancestry to the civilized society of two centuries ago, we 
must face and acknowledge the strange paradox of a valorous 
and honorable people (according to their lights) who, in cer- 
tain cases, practiced assassination without compunction and, 
in fact, with pride. 


It is very difficult for an outsider to understand 
the situation or to sense the atmosphere in which 
a feud becomes possible, indeed almost inevitable. 
In the early pioneer days life was a struggle for 
existence. Men strove not only with the soil 
and the wilderness, but also with wild beasts, 
hostile Indians, and, occasionally, with lawless 
white men. Indians usually fought from ambush. 
They concealed themselves behind trees and rocks. 
They crept up stealthily and took their enemy by 
surprise. The pioneers soon learned to fight the 
Indians by their own method. This hunter’s 
instinct of stealthily stalking one’s prey still per- 
sists, whether they be hunting deer, bear, or men. 


10ur Southern Highlanders, pp. 193, 348. 


Moonshine and Feuds W137 


In those old days courts were far away, near the 
Atlantic coast. There was no police power, no 
sheriff, no constable, within five hundred miles. 
Imagine yourself and a few friends marooned 
upon Robinson Crusoe’s island. If a boatful of 
pirates should land, drunk, insolent, and threaten- 
ing, what would you do? In such circumstances 
it is do or die, with no time for hesitation. Our 
foreparents had to deal with rough and truculent 
disturbers as best they could. In the absence of 
law courts, sheriffs, and constables, every man 
was compelled to take matters into his own 
hand. Under such conditions good men were 
patient, cautious, and reserved, but they were 
courageous, prompt, and thorough. They fought 
their own fights, and they fought to a finish. A 
half-beaten enemy is likely to seek a terrible and 
treacherous revenge, therefore the pioneer, in self- 
defence, punished thoroughly, usually by death. 

To us, protected by adequate police power and 
a strong public opinion, and far removed from the 
single-handed pioneer’s constant perils, his fight- 
ing seems needlessly savage, inhumanly brutal 
and cruel. But to the pioneer it was simply 
necessary. ‘‘He had it to do.’’ This modern 
phrase indicates an attitude of mind in which the 
pioneer habit of suspicious and thorough self- 
defence too often persists even now. 

Before the pioneer conditions and state of mind 
had wholly disappeared, there came the Civil War. 


138 The Land of Saddle-bags 


It aroused men’s passions, not against a foreign 
foe, but against neighbors and kinsmen. While 
the great majority of the Mountain People, like 
Lincoln himself, were on the side of the Union, 
there was all around the borders of the Mountain 
region a division of sentiment. One neighbor en- 
listed in the Union Army, another with the Con- 
federates. In these border areas there was. 
naturally a lot of pillaging, counter pillaging, and 
organizing of Home Guards, seldom officially recog- 
nized. All this resulted in a sort of irregular 
guerrilla warfare, which differed from private 
murder only in having the resentful approval of 
a large part of the community. That is to say, 
the virus of murder was injected into the whole 
community, so that the people became a sort of 
absentee mob, if not consenting to these murders, 
at least condoning them. 

Tom lived on a projecting splinter of 
the Mountains that was almost surrounded with 
Confederate sympathizers. Tom got word that a 
gang of these neighbors was coming to compel 
him to enlist in the Confederate army or to’kill 
him. So he ‘‘hid out’’ for a few days until he 
could get a chance to get away and join the Union 
army. 

The neighbors came and tried to make Tom’s 
wife tell where he was hidden. As she refused, they 
took her out to the rail fence in the yard, lifted 
the panel of rails, spread out her hands upon 








Moonshine and Feuds - 189 


the lower rail, replaced the heavy rails upon her 
fingers, and some of the men added to the agony 
by climbing upon the fence, to add more weight 
to the crushing of her fingers. She still refused 
to betray her husband’s hiding-place. 

When, after the war, Tom returned, is it any 
wonder that he got from his wife the names of her 
tormentors and, lying in wait for them, one by 
one, finally killed seven of them? The general 
comment of the mountain neighbors was, ‘‘'T’om’1l 
git ’em all afore he’s done. And killin’s too good 
fer ’em.’’ | 

This unrepudiating attitude of mind, this ac- 
ceptance of murder as a natural social policy, 
strongly tinged the community consciousness in 
these places, and it has taken a long time to fade 
out. 
enLiis:a significant fact that most of the feudists 
were boys during the awful days of the Civil War. 
Their minds were saturated with bloodshed, and 
they were cursed with the greatest evil of civil 
war, the poison of individual and personal hatred, 
not against unreal or remote creatures of romance, 
but against neighbors. Nothing pertaining to war 
is more devilish than the development of that state 
of mind in which one believes all evil that is 
spoken or insinuated about his neighbors. This 
is the atmosphere of the feud. 

Any sort of dispute in any city may start a 
fight in which men are killed. But a fight is not a 


140 The Land of Saddle-bags 


feud. There can be no feud without a social 
fabric of interwoven kinship. A feud grows out 
of exaggerated loyalty to one’s family, when the 
family has lived in one community so long, has in- 
termarried so persistently, and has been shut 
away from all impact of outsiders so completely 
that half the folk in the county are ‘‘blood kin.’’ 

But if they are all kin, whom would they fight 
against? They fight against each other. The 
kinsmen are not all on one side. No one can tell be- 
forehand who will line up on either side. There 
are always unexpected turns as the ‘‘war’’ goes 
on, and unexpected people are drawn into it. It 
is true the spark, like a slow match, runs along 
the lines of kinship. It is a man’s kinship, or 
the public knowledge of it, that makes it almost 
impossible for him to avoid suspicion and attack 
from one side or the other. But nobody can fore- 
tell where the flame will burst out or from which 
side the attack will come. Casual writers do not 
observe all the facts; consequently, they cannot 
understand the situation, and unintentionally they 
give a distorted impression. 

Kiven with this background of consanguinity, 
together with the pioneer instinct of personal self- 
defence and the bloody-minded inheritance of war, 
a murderous quarrel does not develop into a feud 
until it gets into politics. I do not mean that 
they always quarreled about politics. The origi- 
nal cause of contention might be a business con- 


a 


Moonshine and Feuds 141 


tract, the ownership of some half-wild hogs, the 
treatment of a woman, or any of the thousand 
other things that men fight about. But if the 
courts of justice could remain impartial and 
masterful, the fighting would be checked before it 
could become a feud. Hach party knows that the 
other will seek to elect its own partisans to the 
offices that control or influence the machinery of 
the law. It is very important that we have the 
judge, the sheriff, the marshal, the jailer, on our 
side. If our enemies get possession of these of- 
fices, it is equivalent to the death of the accused 
man either by skilful manipulation of the legal 
machinery or, failing that, by secret assassination 
when he is unarmed and helpless. In these circum- 
stances, the election of this man or that as sheriff 
means life or death to a good many people. Politi- 
cal strife in most places is for money or ambition; 
here it meant life or death. 

A word ought to be said in defence of the courts 
of law. In a neighborhood where the popula- 
tion has intermarried for generations, until every- 
body is the cousin of everybody else, it is diffi- 
cult to get a jury to convict. Witnesses do not 
care to incur the enmity of the accused or of his 
kinsfolk. The sheriff connives at the escape of 
his cousin. Someone on the jury is sure to be a 
far-off kinsman. So even if the judge is un- 
trammeled by consanguinity, he is often helpless. 
Occasionally the officers are not merely inefficient, 


142 The Land of Saddle-bags 


but they are positively and partisanly corrupt. 
They bring false charges, they arrest the innocent 
victim, disarm him, and stand by while their kins- 
men murder him. 

Under such conditions when two men quarrel, 
the kinsfolk on both sides, especially the immedi- 
ate families, are expecting attack and get their 
guns and ammunition ready. This suspicious atti- 
tude, this nervous tension, together with the jolt- 
ing of their calmer judgment by bitter talk and 
whiskey, adds the spark to the individual ‘‘pre- 
paredness,’’ and it flames up into a feud. 

Revenge is not, as is sometimes stated, the main 
cause of a feud, but rather suspicion and the in- 
stinct for self-defence, coupled with wide-spread 
distrust of the courts and officers of law. Suppose 
aman kills your father and is not arrested because 
the sheriff is his cousin. You make no attempt to 
kill him. But when he thinks it over, talks it over 
with hot-headed kinsmen, and drinks it over in 
white whiskey, he concludes that you will be sure 
to waylay him, therefore he had better kill you 
also to be safe. He does. Gathered around your 
coffin, your family and kinsfolk reason that his 
next move will be to kill your brother, so they 
decide to ‘‘get’’ him before he shoots any more 
of the family—very natural reasoning under the 
circumstances. Why are the advocates of national 
preparedness so shocked at this individual pre- 
paredness? 





Moonshine and Feuds ie t43 


A feud almost always arises from the arrogance 
and half-drunken bullying of armed men. Such 
fellows, idle, drinking, quarrelsome, band _ to- 
gether, perhaps for minor depredations. Men 
avoid them as much as possible and endure a 
good deal of annoyance till some man, driven be- 
yond all patience, resists, and there is a fight in 
which one is killed, perhaps both. Usually, on 
account of the numbers, it is the innocent man that 
is killed, and the murderers grow still more inso- 
lent and defiant. Then if, for reasons of kinship 
or cowardice, the sheriff, or judge, or jury do noth- 
ing, the slain man’s relatives naturally arm them- 
selves, either for revenge or, more likely, for self- 
protection. 

A feud never arises except from the impotence 
of justice and that impotence often arises from the 
shrewd manipulation of the machinery of the law 
in the interest of the law breaker. When the law 
that should protect the peaceable citizens and 
punish the outrageous becomes by juggled 
elections a strong weapon in the hands of the law- 
less, and there is no hope of wresting it from them, 
then the victims resort to bloody resistance and 
armed force. Whiskey complicates the situation, 
arouses devilish passions, and, by removing the 
inhibitions of prudence and fairmindedness, in- 
cites men to instant and fierce aggression. In 
some feuds one side is honorable and law-abiding; 
its members are driven to take up arms in self- 


144 The Land of Saddle-bags 


defence. Its leaders practice great self-restraint 
and hold their followers back from the reckless 
blood-lust and murderous practices of their op- 
ponents. But even so, some of their less high- 
minded followers occasionally break over in a fit 
of exasperation and slay opponents with their 
enemies’ own savagery. This is an inevitable re- 
sult of war, either public or private. Whether 
waged by a nation or by a family, it is wholly 
demoralizing. Public and private war alike grow 
out of the blindness and selfish greed of society, 
which makes no adequate constructive prepara- 
tions for peace, but heedlessly permits inflam- 
mable material to accumulate until explosion and 
conflagration become inevitable. The Mountain 
man that attempts to redress the injustice of the 
law by using the rifle is no more guilty in his law- 
lessness than is the millionaire corporation that 
uses shrewd lawyers instead of rifles. Is he not 
really less accountable than criminal lawyers that 
for a large fee assist guilty clients to defeat 
justice? 

‘‘We’re pore folks, and we cain’t fight money 
in the courts.”’ 

‘“We hain’t had much schoolin’, and when 
judges and lawyers with heaps o’ larnin’ scrouges 
a pore ignorant jury, what can ye do?”’ 

‘‘Hivery feller has to fight with the weapons he 
can git.’’ 


Moonshine and Feuds eae 


The political struggle in such conditions is not 
prompted by ambition, but always by the craving 
for safety. The contest is not for congressman or 
legislator, but for the local offices of sheriff, county 
judge, marshal, constable, or jailer. These would 
be able to pick a jury of kinsmen, or issue warrants 
against one’s enemies, or unlock the jail door to 
let one escape, or kill an inconvenient enemy while 
pretending to arrest him. 

It was possibilities, nay, probabilities, like these 
that caused such fierce contests and such bitter 
feeling over elections. The election of one such 
candidate undoubtedly meant death to a good many 
of those opposing him—death by assassination, 
sometimes from ambush, sometimes under cover of 
the law. 

A brief sketch of some of these conditions must 
suffice. Interested readers can find ample records 
of details of such strife in Mutzenberg’s Ken- 
tucky’s Famous Feuds and Tragedies.’ 


Tom Dillam, a wealthy land owner, married 
John Bohn’s daughter, who soon left him. One 
day Mrs. Dillam angrily returned to her husband’s 
farm and took one of her aprons from a woman 
working in the field. Dillam went to recover it, 
quarreled with her, and shot his father-in-law, 
killing him instantly. Dillam baffled the courts 


1 Published by R. F. Fenno and Company, New York. 


146 The Land of Saddle-bags 


for many years by shrewdness and intimidation. 
He armed and incited his relatives and friends 
till he had behind him a whole band of arrogant 
outlaws. In 1885, Bohn’s son William had a dis- 
pute over timber with Tom’s brother, George 
Dillam, who, knowing the band would back him, 
became insolent. Bohn armed himself with a 
Winchester and soon met George Dillam similarly 
armed. Both darted behind trees and began firing. 
Dillam was killed. Bohn, wounded, ran for 
shelter, but was killed by George’s brothers, Sam 
and Curt. 

One of Bohn’s friends was now drawn into the 
feud, Lem Buffum. He had married a sister of 
George and Sam Dillam. But the Dillam band 
were bitter against him because of his former 
friendship with Bohn. There was a dance on 
Christmas night at which two of the Dillam band 
who had been drinking sought a quarrel with Buf- 
fum. Suddenly it blazed forth, and when the 
smoke cleared, the two lay dead upon the floor. 
Buffum fled to a neighboring state. His brother- 
in-law, Sam Dillam, followed him relentlessly. 
Once he grazed Buffum’s head with a rifle ball. 
Again, reckless with drink, Sam taunted and 
threatened him. Buffum, suspecting an ambush, 
cautiously retreated, Sam following. When Buf- 
fum reached home, he turned, and as soon as Sam 
entered his lot, he killed him. Buffum wished to 
surrender to the officers, but neither they nor the 


Moonshine and Feuds ee Ve 


courts would protect him. That would be merely 
to invite assassination, unarmed.? 

The Dillams began a reign of terror. They 
threatened every Buffum sympathizer, riddled 
their houses with bullets or killed them outright. 
Buffum’s aged mother was conveyed across the 
river by Jack Smith, who was thereupon waylaid 
and killed. Jake Kimbrell, another friend, was 
seized at a dance and held fast while one of the 
band killed him. 

But they were carrying things too far. Ab 
Dillam, a brother of Tom, would not help to hunt 
Buffum. Ab’s son, Jesse, had married Buffum’s 
sister. In his absence, his house was riddled with 
bullets, but his wife and children escaped. The 
camp of civil engineers surveying for a new rail- 
way was raided. Nobody was safe. The 
Governor, when asked for troops, refused to 
send them, because the sheriff had not made any 
attempt to capture the murderers with a posse 
of citizens. But the citizens knew that unless they 
killed or captured all the outlaws, their families 
would be attacked, their homes burned, and they 
themselves constantly ambushed. 

The judge called for fifty militiamen; fifteen re- 
sponded. With this puny force, the sheriff started 
out. A lad on horseback saw the officers and gave 
the alarm. The outlaws escaped into adjacent 


1 Once when the circuit court was in session, Tom Dillam and 
his band entered, broke up the court, and ordered the Judge to 
leave the county. 


148 The Land of Saddle-bags 


hilly woods. The sheriff retreated, fearing an 
ambush. He left seven men at Jesse Dillam’s 
house to guard it till Jesse could move his family 
to a safe distance. Within an hour they were 
surrounded, the outlaws creeping close through 
high corn. Jesse sent away his wife and children, 
and all started for a neighbor’s log house, which 
would better resist attack. They never reached 
it. One was killed instantly, one fled, and the 
rest, badly wounded, managed to escape. The out- 
laws planned an attack upon the county seat, 
where the wounded men were, but the activities 
of the sheriff deterred them. Various attempts at 
arrest were, however, futile. 

Circuit Court soon met, and Tom and Curt 
Dillam were arrested, but Tom was released on 
$5,000 bail. Thus have Mountain courts, badgered 
by unscrupulous lawyers, ‘‘protected’’ innocent 
citizens from desperadoes. Some weeks later Tom 
Dillam was walking toward the courthouse with 
his lawyer, followed by his lieutenant and another 
man. When opposite the house where their 
wounded victims were, they started across the 
street, drawing their pistols. The lawyer fortu- 
nately walked on. The outlaws had_ scarcely 
reached the middle of the street when a terrific 
fire poured upon them. T’om Dillam fell, pierced 
by sixteen bullets. Jesse Dillam, Buffum, and 
their friends had been secretly warned and were 
ready. 


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Moonshine and Feuds PLA 


With the death of Tom Dillam, people breathed 
more freely. But the poison, of course, had entered 
into the fabric of the community. Accustomed so 
long to no constraint of law or duty, these men 
grew brutally arrogant and cruel. Tom Dillam’s 
son, now the leader of the band, wishing to re- 
move a rival, gave one of his band twenty dollars 
and a gun to kill him. The slyest of the band 
planned the murder. He knew that a young 
woman had invited the victim to supper on a 
certain evening. Accordingly, he also secured an 
invitation from the young woman for that same 
evening. While the party was gathering around 
the dining-table, he slipped back into the parlor 
and pinned back the heavy window curtains. 
After supper the victim stepped into the parlor 
and was instantly shot by someone outside the 
window. The community was indignant, and the 
criminals were hunted down; some of them were 
killed, the rest were captured. 

But even when such flagrant criminals were 
captured, punishment was not at all certain. Curt 
Dillam was released on bail, but his body was 
found shortly after in the woods. Doubtless he 
was shot by someone who was disgusted with ‘‘the 
law’s delays’’ and afraid that the released outlaw 
would seek vengeance on those that had given 
testimony against him. 

A more famous feud was known as the Rowan 
County trouble. 


1 Condensed from Mutzenberg. 


150 The Land of Saddle-bags 


—_———. 


In 1874, Thomas EF’. Hargis, Democrat, Captain 
in the Confederate Army, was a candidate for 
Circuit Judge against George M. Thomas, Re- 
publican. Opponents said Hargis was not old 
enough as a man or as a lawyer to be eligible. 
Hargis went to his former home in Rowan County 
to get the court records. The pages had been 
cut out. The campaign became very bitter. Har- 
gis was defeated. Two years later he was elected. 
In 1879 he ran for Appellate Judge of Kentucky. 
In spite of great opposition in the Democratic Con- 
vention he was nominated and later elected. 
Newspapers had persistently circulated virulent’ 
accusations and counter-charges. In Rowan 
County the division was sharp. Voting at that 
time was not by secret ballot, but was public, 
the voter’s name and his choice being called out 
aloud. ‘This made it possible to buy votes and 
see that they were cast as agreed. Bribery be- 
came very common, and as whiskey was permitted 
everywhere, fights were frequent. 

These conditions grew worse year by year. In 
1884 a close race for Sheriff between Cook 
Humphrey, Republican, and 8. B. Goodman, Demo- 
crat, fanned the coals into a blaze. In a general 
fight one man was killed and two were wounded. 
Sizemore was supposedly wounded by Sheriff 
Day, and Martin by Floyd Tolliver. The Martins 


Moonshine and Feuds Sui beg 


and Sizemores, the Days and Tollivers organized 
and armed. A few months later Martin met Floyd 
Tolliver in a saloon. Flushed with liquor, they 
quarreled, and Tolliver was killed. Martin was 
lodged in jail, but the court, fearing violence, trans- 
fered him to Winchester. The Tollivers were 
furious. Instead of sending for Martin for trial, 
the Judge postponed the proceedings lest the 
Tollivers assassinate the prisoner on the journey. 
The town marshal, a Tolliver clansman, took four 
others, and, with a forged order, got Martin from 
the Winchester jail. The train was stopped at 
a flag station, a band of Tollivers entered and 
killed the handcuffed prisoner. The County At- 
torney had incurred Tolliver hostility by taking 
the prisoner to Winchester. He was now accused 
by the Martins of conniving at this murder. He 
was shot from ambush and severely wounded, 
whereupon he left the county and settled else- 
where. 

A few weeks later, at the same spot, Deputy 
Sheriff Baumgartner was shot and killed pre- 
sumably in retaliation by the Tollivers. 

This gave rise to a battle in the streets of More- 
head. Sheriff Humphrey, the Martins, and H. M. 
Logan occupied the Carey Hotel; the Tollivers, 
Days, and Bowlings gathered at the Cottage Hotel. 
Continuous firing kept the inhabitants in terror 
for many hours. Though houses were riddled and 


152 The Land of Saddle-bags 


splintered, nobody was killed. But the peaceable 
citizens left in large numbers. 

The Governor sent the Adjutant General of 
Kentucky to Rowan County to investigate. On 
receiving his report, the Governor, instead of 
prosecuting the offenders, summoned the leaders 
of both sides to Louisville. Here they agreed to 
return home, lay down their arms, and keep the 
peace. This weak-kneed compromise was, of 
course, immediately broken. Pierce, the com- 
panion of Humphrey on the day of the battle, was 
arrested in another county for robbery. In jail 
he admitted shooting Young and implicated the 
Sheriff and a stranger, Rayborn. He also accused 
Martin’s sisters of employing him to kill Young. 

The accused denied the charge and said Young 
had bribed Pierce to make the confession. But 
though unproved, this added fuel to the flame. The 
Tollivers kept a constant watch upon the Martin 
home about a mile from Morehead. In July two 
men were reported there. Craig Tolliver, Bowling, 
Day, and others surrounded the house all night, 
and next morning forced their way past the 
women to the stairway, where Tolliver was se- 
verely wounded with a shotgun. He was sent to 
Morehead, and from there directed a lot more to 
help in the attack from every side. Twenty-five 
or thirty assailants fired into the house all day. 
Humphrey and Rayborn realized that when night 
fell there would be a rush from all sides, in which 


Moonshine and Feuds maa Cas 


the women would almost certainly be killed. Both 
men ran out in the hope of drawing away the 
attack, but Rayborn was killed. Humphrey, on 
the other hand, miraculously escaped. The Tol- 
livers then set fire to the house, the women still 
in it. Unnoticed, however, they managed to es- 
cape, delaying only long enough to build with fence 
rails a pen over the body of Rayborn to protect 
it from hogs or dogs. These women swore out 
warrants against Craig Tolliver, Bowling, and 
others, but the examining trial was a farce. 

A lull occurred for a time, in which Wiley Tolli- 
ver was killed in a drunken squabble and a man 
named Pelfrey was killed by Tom Goodan, 
Wiley’s brother-in-law. Goodan was tried, but 
acquitted. 

As election day drew near, Humphrey and Craig 
Tolliver roamed through the County with armed 
followers. On court day the new sheriff attempted 
to arrest Humphrey. Firing became general, the 
sheriff and his son were wounded, and a young son 
of H. M. Logan was killed. State troops were 
demanded. They were ordered out and remained 
for several weeks, and the election passed without 
bloodshed. 

At the next court a prosecuting attorney ap- 
pointed from Louisville recommended another 
compromise because he felt that it would be im- 
possible to secure impartial trials. Humphrey 
and Craig Tolliver signed agreements to leave 


154 The Land of Saddle-bags 


Rowan County forever. With Humphrey’s de- 
parture, the Martin faction disbanded. Tolliver 
returned in twenty-four hours, and, with his 
followers, became more insolent than ever. Magis- 
trates that were, not Tolliver partisans were in- 
timidated, and violence went unpunished. To any 
protesting citizen Craig Tolliver sent a written 
notice of his funeral on some early date. Many 
left; others, who disregarded the notices, were 
murdered. Among the latter was the Constable, 
Keeton, killed by Bud Tolliver. Howard M. Lo- 
gan, after being wounded from ambush, left the 
county. Judge Carey’s hotel was shot almost to 
pieces. He left. Of the seven hundred inhabi- 
tants of Morehead, four hundred left. Craig Tol- 
liver elected himself police judge and Bunk Man- 
nin, town marshal. The Tollivers now controlled 
all the machinery of the law. When two daughters 
of Howard M. Logan were courageous enough to 
testify against the Tollivers before the grand jury, 
they were immediately indicted for perjury. Mrs. 
Martin was indicted for sending a poisoned 
turkey to a Tolliver partisan. Dr. Henry S. Lo- 
gan, his sons William H. and John B., with others, 
were arrested for conspiring to murder. They 
were lodged in jail at Lexington. The sons gave 
bond and returned to look after the farm about 
four miles from Morehead. Another indictment 
was issued against the boys, and .Judge Craig 
Tolliver, Bunk Mannin, and ten other men went 


Moonshine and Feuds SS 


to arrest them. In this posse were Deputy Sheriff 
Hogg, Bud, Jay, and Cal Tolliver. They set fire 
to the house, murdered the boys, and trampled 
them beyond recognition. 

Next day, Daniel Boone Logan, a cousin of the 
boys, with two friends, took up the bodies for 
burial. That night they received notice that if 
they attended the funeral, they would be treated 
in similar fashion. Boone Logan was commanded 
also to leave town. Craig Tolliver wrote that he 
would rent Logan’s house and hire out Mrs. Logan 
to make a living for her children. Boone Logan 
tried in vain to get the murderers arrested. He 
then, in secret meetings, got a number of men 
pledged to bring about the Tollivers’ arrest and 
trial. Logan was chosen leader. He decided to 
go to Frankfort and ask the Governor for troops. 
In case this was refused, he had another plan. For 
a week he continued making his preparations, 
while the Tollivers made futile search for him, 
patrolling every road, even searching the out- 
going trains. Logan eluded the Tollivers and 
reached Frankfort. The Governor, taking refuge 
behind a technicality, refused to help. He would 
neither send troops nor lend arms. Logan felt 
the hopeless impotence of the enslaved. The whole 
machinery of justice was either corrupt or para- 
lyzed. At that very moment his wife and children 
might be murdered. What could a law-abiding 
man do? With eyes that blazed, he looked into 


156 The Land of Saddle-bags 


the eyes of the official. ‘‘Governor, I have but 
one home and but one hearth. From this I have 
been driven by these outlaws and their friends. 
They have foully murdered my kinsmen. I have 
not before now engaged in any of their difficulties 
—but now I propose to take a hand, and retake my 
fireside or die in the effort.”’ 

Logan went to Cincinnati, bought several 
hundred dollars’ worth of rifles, pistols, shotguns, 
and ammunition. These he boxed and shipped 
as saw-mill fixtures to a little station some miles 
from Morehead. Logan returned to Morehead, 
summoned his friends (many came from neigh- 
boring counties), supplied them with arms, and 
gave Sheriff Hoge the legal warrants for the 
arrest of the Tollivers. The citizens were to act 
only if the Tollivers resisted arrest. They closed 
in around the town in various bands. Logan was 
stationed near the depot, Pigman across the road 
with a half a dozen more. 

As might have been expected, Hogg failed them. 
The Tollivers discovered the plan and began a 
furious attack. Having waited for the Sheriff as 
long as they dared, Logan’s forces began firing 
in return, and the battle soon raged wherever his 
followers were stationed. 

Craig Tolliver and his kinsmen were driven to 
the Central Hotel. Logan, exposing himself to 
the fire of these concealed enemies, ceased firing 
and demanded their surrender, promising them 


Moonshine and Feuds Kona bee 


protection. They refused, and the firing continued 
until Craig Tolliver and the other leaders were 
killed. The battle lasted two hours. As soon as 
the firing ceased, a public meeting was called. 
People, relieved that the dreaded Tollivers were 
wiped out, flocked to it. A Law and Order League 
was formed, and armed men were appointed to 
patrol and guard the town until the troops again 
demanded should arrive. 

‘‘Hor the first time in many months the town 
was quiet. The yells and defiant curses of 
drunken desperadoes were heard no more.’’ 

From these examples, it is evident that: no feud 
could arise if the courts were above suspicion, 
and the people could trust themselves to them; if 
the courts were reasonably certain to punish crimi- 
nals, and to punish promptly; if the community 
felt that justice would be done impartially and 
fearlessly; if witnesses felt secure in giving testi- 
mony, and jurymen knew that they would be pro- 
tected from private vengeance. 

This situation is part of the great national 
problem of the deplorable inefficiency and per- 
version of the courts of law. All of America has 
been settled and built up by successive migrations 
beyond the jurisdiction of constituted authority. 
Naturally, therefore, one element in the American 
spirit—where not yet purged out—is a boyish 
sense of irresponsible freedom when playing 
truant in the woods. In the untraveled isolation 


158 The Land of Saddle-bags 


of the Mountains, this somewhat insolent sense of 
freedom has remained a little longer and a little 
stronger than elsewhere. 


A study of the examples of feuds cited above 
will show that while there is in the blood of the 
Mountain People a tendency to clannishness and 
exaggerated family loyalty, there is no such thing 
among them as clan organization or clan govern- 
ment, as is asserted by some writers. In the first 
case, a brother of the Dillam leader remained 
neutral, until he and his family in self-defense 
turned agaimst his own kin, or clan, as these 
writers would term it. In the other case, Boone 
Logan had remained neutral almost to the last, 
and various others were drawn in, one at a time, 
but always by personal circumstances. Their kin- 
ship was undoubtedly one factor in their being 
drawn in, but others just as close in kinship were 
not drawn in. If there had been clan organization 
or clan government, the whole connection would 
have arisen at once. Asa matter of fact, in many 
instances the ‘‘band’’ that a feud leader has 
gathered has been largely of mercenary origin, 
though doubtless there has often been more or less 
remote kinship between these hired feudists and 
their leader. 

A word of caution should be added before 
leaving the subject. The feudists have never 
constituted more than a very small proportion of 


Moonshine and Feuds 159 


the people. Why then, someone asks, did not the 
majority arise and put a stop to the feud? How 
could they arise? Some one person would neces- 
sarily have to stir folk up and organize them. But 
he would be shot before he could rally people to- 
gether. Hvenif he escaped assassination, what do 
you think he could do? What do you mean by 
‘farise’’?? Do you want him to arm the good citi- 
zens and put down the feud by force? Then he 
and his followers would themselves be unlawfully 
under arms, and disturbers of the peace. Oh, no! 
You want them to put it down by the ballot. It 
may be eighteen months till the next election. 
When that time comes, what hope? Under our 
American system of government, the few men that 
control the party machinery have the rest of us 
by the throat. If those few men are determined 
lawbreakers, what can be done? 

There must be vigorous agitation and free dis- 
cussion, and an expensive and skilful political 
campaign must be started. But when the few men 
in control of the political machinery mark for 
assassination any man that starts such a cam- 
paign, the average individual decides to mind his 
own business. This, of course, is not the ideal 
of patriotism. But how far does it differ from the 
action of other communities with far greater op- 
portunities for enlightenment and burdened with 
no such handicaps? 

There are many Mountain men still living that 


160 The Land of Saddle-bags 


have fought in a feud. Some of them are brutal 
and murderous gunmen, others are peaceable 
gentlemen, most desirable citizens, comparable to 
our Revolutionary fathers, who took up arms only 
as a last resort. 

While there are a good many places where a feud 
might even yet blaze forth from the old smoldering 
embers, such an irruption is not probable. The 
feud cannot stand against genuine freedom of 
speech and the community spirit. 

The conditions that made feuds possible are 
rapidly passing away. Almost everywhere they 
have already largely passed. Outsiders have 
moved in, or Mountain men from other counties 
who are unconnected by kinship. Some of the 
younger men have been away to school, where they 
have learned to think and act for themselves. 
With such men in the community, the favorable 
verdict of public opinion cannot be so securely as- 
sumed by the partisan leaders. The solidarity 
broken, the coercion of kinship becomes much 
weaker, and the invisible rule gradually fades. 


The Mountains Go to School 


The Mountains Go to School 


HEIR greatest need is good schools 

adapted to their conditions—schools 
that will make them intelligent about the 
life they live; that will teach them what 
they need to know to enable them to ad- 
just themselves to their environment and 
to conquer it; schools that will appeal to 
children and grown people alike; schools 
with courses of study growing out of their 
daily life as it is and turning back into 
it a better and more efficient. daily living. 


P. P. CLAXTON 





CHAPTER SEVEN 
The Mountans Go to School 


HE education of any community is more 
dependent than we realize upon facil- 
ity of transportation and communication. 
Sparsely settled populations are never able to 
support good schools. Children from widely scat- 
tered families always have a somewhat ragged 
record of attendance. In pioneer places where 
sudden emergencies are constantly arising, the 
larger or more dependable children are fre- 
quently kept at home to help in this or that un- 
foreseen need. Then, there is always a tendency 
on the frontier to measure one’s ability by the 
practical tasks that confront every dweller there. 
The qualities necessary for success, or even for 
survival, are not those taught in the schoolroom. 
‘‘Book-larning’’ is not of such immediate im- 
portance as skill with an ax and gun, courage in 
danger, and resourcefulness in meeting the severe 
conditions of pioneer life. In such a situation it 
is always extremely difficult to make schooling 
seem as important to the young people, or to their 
parents, as the competing activities that tend to 
crowd it out. 
In the Mountains we have all these conditions 
existing at once.. The isolation is accentuated. 


The people are cut off not only from the outside 
163 


164 The Land of Saddle-bags 


currents of modern life, but often they are un- 
believably separated from ‘‘near’’ neighbors. 
Two families living on parallel creeks only a mile 
or two apart may be separated by a mountain, 
over whose shattered cliffs there is not even a 
path. Down near the mouth of a creek the people 
are waterbound whenever there are heavy rains. 
Even the agile and hardy animals sometimes slip 
on the wet mountain paths and break their legs 
or their necks. Slips or landslides are a con- 
stant danger in the rainy season. Every strong 
wind breaks down dead lmbs and often large 
trees. How resolutely would you send your chil- 
dren to school in the face of these dangers? 
Because of such conditions, there is in the 
Mountains a startling proportion of men and 
women that cannot read and write. But in fron- 
tier surroundings the term ‘‘illiterate’’? must not 
suggest mental deficiency. The English nobility 
of an older day, men of culture and administrative 
power, left writing to their monks, as they left 
forge-work to their armorer or smith. So in our 
wilderness or frontier life writing was of minor 
importance. Far back in the mountains there 
died very recently a man who kept a large store 
—indeed, it was in some measure a wholesale — 
store—yet he could neither read nor write. But 
his mind was so keen and powerful that he actu- 
ally invented a system of notation and kept his 
accounts thereby. It would be rash to call such 





A MODERN PRISCILLA 


Back and forth, back and forth before the large wheel, Susie takes 
countless steps as she spins the wool that will keep the family in 
warm clothing and coverlids. Her mother, sitting at her work, 
is spinning flax at a small wheel, turned by a foot treadle. This 
wool from their own sheep and flax of their own raising will also 
be dyed and woven at home. “Hit ain’t so purty as the fotch-on 
goods,’ remarks the mother, “but it’s a heap endurabler.” 





FIVE MILES FROM THE STORE 


When she’s “clean out 0’ bakin’ powders, and has broke her needle, 
and wants a new dress,”’ the “woman” takes her baby and a basket 
of eggs and rides to the little store five miles away to barter for 
groceries and ‘‘fixin’s.” “Them eggs gets powerful heavy afore” 
she gets through, because her baby is “restless.” Little Hiram 
climbs on behind to ride a mile up the creck to the schoolhouse. 


The Mountains Go to School = 165 


a man ignorant; it would be wiser to recognize 
in him an original creative genius. He had been 
deprived of the schooling that most children re- 
ceive as a matter of course. When he was a boy, 
doubtless the total taxes from his neighborhood 
were not sufficient to pay the sheriff; naturally 
there was no money for school teachers. Even 
today do not so-called civilized communities build 
marble-stepped, court-houses when their sordid 
schoolhouses are quite unable to seat all their 
school-children? 

Before the Mountain people migrated into these 
Mountain fastnesses, they were intelligent and 
well schooled. There are extant a lot of petitions * 
sent to the Virginia Governor and Assembly by 
the frontiersmen of Kentucky when the commu- 
nity was organized as a far-off County or District 
of Virginia. These petitions were for the es-. 
tablishment of ferries, courts, roads, mill-dams, 
land-titles, and so forth. 

Many of the petitioners lived, as one of them 
quaintly writes, ‘‘in an Extream of the said 
County in the hills and Mountains detached from 
almost Kivery community or opportunity of in- 
formation.’’ Yet most of them signed their own 
names. There were comparatively few illiterates 
in those days. Even though they were then in 
strenuous conflict with the wilderness and the In- 


1 James Rood Robertson: Petitions of the Early Inhabitants of 
Kentucky—Filson Club Publication No. 27. 


« 


166 The Land of Saddle-bags 


dians, the frontiersmen made strong efforts to 
establish the means of education.* 

Before the Revolutionary War Augusta Acad- 
emy and Liberty Hall Academy (in Lexington) 
had been planted on the western slope of the Blue 
Ridge in the Valley of Virginia. 

As early as 1780 the general assembly of Vir- 
ginia voted a tract of eight thousand acres to aid 
and encourage education in Kentucky, which had 
been legally organized as a county of Virginia 
four years before. This land was used for the 
founding of Transylvania College.? In this same 
year a Presbyterian minister, Samuel Doak, on 
his own initiative started a private school on the 
Little Limestone fork of the Nolichucky River. 
This, three years later, was chartered by the leg- 
islature of North Carolina under the name of Mar- 
tin Academy. The year following, 1784, North 
Carolina ceded the land that now constitutes the 
State of Tennessee to Congress. This left the 


1In Virginia, 1755—“More than forty per cent of the men 
who made deeds or served on juries could not sign their names, 
although they were of the land-owning and better educated 
classes.” BEVERIDGE: John Marshall, Vol. I, p. 24. 

“The solicitous anxiety which discovers itself in the principal 
Inhabitants of this Country (the wilderness) for having Schools 
or Seminaries of Learning among them that their Children may 
be educated as becomes a civilized people.” From a Petition of 
the settlers in Kentucky, 1783. 

2“A fund for the maintenance and education of youth, and it 
being the interest of this commonwealth always to promote and 
encourage every design which may tend to the improvement of the 
mind and the diffusion of useful knowledge, even among the most 
remote citizens, whose situation a barbarous neighborhood and a 
savage intercourse might otherwise render unfriendly to science.” 


The Mountans Go to School © 167 


settlers therein without any responsible govern- 
ment. They were naturally indignant at being 
thus tossed outside the pale of civilization, where- 
upon they drew up a constitution and Declaration 
of Independence, and formed themselves into the 
State of Franklin. The legislature of Franklin 
issued a new charter to Martin Academy in 1785. 
Apparently, upon the dissolution of the govern- 
ment of Franklin, the school was rechartered in 
1788. Seven years later it was chartered once 
more by the territorial government of Tennes- 
see under its present name—Washington College. 
This academy on the western slope of the Alle- 
gheny Mountains was the first school of classical 
learning in the Mississippi Valley. 


In 1794 the Rev. Samuel Carrick laid the foun- 
dations of Blount College, now the University of 
Tennessee. That same year Dr. Doak moved 
down the river a few miles and started another 
school which grew into Tusculum College. In 
North Carolina they founded an academy at Ala- 
mance and another at- Liberty Hall, which later 
became the State University. The Rev. Hezekiah 
Bolch started a school near by which later be- 
came Greeneville College. In 1802 Rev. Isaac An- 
derson founded Union Academy which later be- 
came Maryville College. Of course a dozen acad- 
emies in these wide-stretched settlements could 
educate but a few, and later, when the public school 


168 The Land of Saddle-bags 


system started, there was no supply of teachers 
to man them. Year by year the situation grew 
worse, as isolation congealed education. 


/ Today, of course, every district has a school- 
é 


house of some sort, in which a school is conducted 
in some fashion. But the schoclhouse, the length 
of the school term, and the teaching are too often, 
one or all, very inadequate. 

Level land is so scarce in the Mountain area 
that it is usually pre-empted for the family gar- 
den, which must furnish the major part of the 
food supply. Even if it were not thus seized, 
schoolhouses would not be built thereupon, for it 
is safer to have the children higher up, out of 
reach of the sudden tides, or high-waters that 
roar in torrents down the creeks after heavy rains 
or melting snow. 

The little schoolhouse, therefore, is usually 
built on a steep slope, one side set up on stilts. 
It is seldom fenced. Even more seldom have any 
shrubs, flowers, or grass been planted. It is to 
be used only a few months in the year, so it is 
made as cheap and ugly as possible, and its sur- 
rounding are unbelievably bare and depressing. 
There are no outhouses and no playground. 

Such a schoolhouse is not always furnished with 
desks. Its blackboards are often worn colorless, 
and chalk is frequently lacking. Often there is no 
chair for the teacher, and the stove pipe is likely 
to rust down or disappear between sessions. The 


The Mountains Go to School 169 


school term is often discouragingly short. A few 
years ago a three-months’ school was very com- 
mon. But for most of the pupils that seldom 
meant sixty days’ attendance. The average at- 
tendance in the district was often less than thirty 
days. Where would you and I have been with only 
thirty non-consecutive days of instruction in a 
year? 

Recent years have seen great improvements in 
education. Schools for five months are now as com- 
mon as the three-months’ school used to be. And 
though many districts have still only a three-or 
four-months’ school, a great number have gradu- 
ally increased the term to five or six months, and 
a few are heroically supporting seven or eight. 
The average attendance computed by counties 
runs from twenty days’ attendance in a year 
to ninety. Ninety days of instruction out of 
three hundred and sixty-five is the highest aver- 
age attendance that any county shows. Of course 
many individuals in the county may have been 
present every day the school was open, but there 
were doubtless some who did not come at all, and 
many who came irregularly, making the best aver- 
age very meager. 

Not only in such districts is the public school 
term lamentably short and attendance thereupon 
woefully intermittent, but in far too many cases 
the teaching is pitifully inadequate. 

The time is not long past when, in many dis- 


170 The Land of Saddle-bags 


tricts, it was expected that the teacher would 
give one fourth of his first month’s salary to the 
influential trustee whose vote elected him. An 
original and effective system of teachers’ agen- 
cies! County superintendents are still living who 
eked out their regular salaries by selling to pros- 
pective teachers advance copies of the examina- 
tion questions they intended to ask the candidates 
for certificates. When with even such assistance 
the way was barred to pedagogical progress, there 
were other avenues. On one occasion two brothers 
appeared for examination. The older was alert 
and acquainted with the usual subject matter, the 
younger brother was ignorant and rather stupid. 
The examiner placed the questions before them. 
They sat down and wrote for an hour. When the 
superintendent’s attention was elsewhere, they ex- 
changed papers, signed them, and handed them 
in. The stupid brother was given a certificate 
and was employed to teach a school. The brighter 
brother, of course, failed; but he went into the 
next county, took an examination there, received 
a certificate, and secured a school. 

On the other hand, it is impossible to appreciate 
too highly the faithful labors of thousands of 
teachers who, with poor preparation in ‘‘book- 
learning,’’ but with a passion for intelligence and 
with natural ability to teach, showed a patient de- 
votion to the children’s progress which is above all 
praise. 


The Mountans Go to School . 171 


In the remote districts it is very difficult to get 
teachers. Even where the school is not given to 
some of the kinsfolk of a trustee, it must usually 
be given to somebody living in the district because 
there is no suitable boarding place for a stranger. 
Even if a room were obtainable, an outsider could 
scarcely afford to apply for the position. The 
average or median salary, at last accounts, was 
rather less than $250 a year. Of course this does 
not mean a full year’s teaching, but because of the 
overlapping of school terms, it is impossible for 
a short term teacher to supplement her salary 
by securing employment in another school during 
the same school year and there is no other work 
in the neighborhood for the remainder of the year. 

It was really easier to get teachers when schools 
ran only three months, July to September, because 
college and normal school students were available 
during the summer months. Six months’ schools 
are often taught by ambitious young men or 
women who can teach through the school term and 
then return to their studies at Christmas. 

Much has been written about the evils of tenant 
farming; the hopelessness of improvement when 
the tenant expects to leave at the end of the year. 
‘‘Making things do’’ becomes a settled habit. 
‘¢What’s the use?’’ becomes the motto of action, or 
rather of inaction. There is a similar deadening 
influence in these sequestered and fragmentary 
terms of school. A teacher could scarcely hope 


172 The Land of Saddle-bags 


to educate public opinion to any unanimity within 
a few months. And even if it were possible, it 
would probably be dissipated during the long 
interval before the next school term, supposing 
the same teacher to be coming back, a rather ven- 
turesome supposition. There can be neither con- 
tinuity nor permanence in such school work. In 
the interim the pupils forget all they know and 
their thirst for learning disappears. The parents 
become discouraged, the community mildly hope- 
less. 

In other parts of America there are in most 
communities a number of forces that help to 
create public sentiment favorable to good schools: 
the Parent-Teacher Associations, the Women’s 
Clubs, such men’s clubs as the Rotary, the K1i- 
wanis, and the like, the local newspapers, the 
church societies, and the literary circles. In the 
Land of Saddle-bags these scarcely exist. There 
is no common medium of discussion. The people 
gather together pretty generally ‘‘when the Elder 
comes over from Hickory Ridge to preach,’’ 
perhaps the last Sunday of each month. A small 
shifting group, men only, mingles in conversation 
every Saturday at the store, whither they have 
come to do their trading and indulge in the lux- 
ury of gossip. Groups of the younger folk meet 
here and there at a frolic or a dance, but general 
conversation is not their object, and community 
affairs receive scant attention. There is no com- 


The Mountains Go to School 173 


mon vehicle, no fluid solvent for the easy dissemi- 
nation of ideas throughout the whole community. 
Perhaps even the term ‘‘community”’ is a mislead- 
ing name for the scattered people that live up and 
down the same creek, each family like a remote 
constellation, revolving in its own fixed orbit. 

An important contribution to education is made 
by books. ‘T'hese are far too rare in the Land of 
Saddle-bags. Many of the old people cannot read 
at all, Many more can only painfully spell out 
whatever is important enough to warrant the 
trouble. Windows are few and small, so the aver- 
age interior is Rembrandt-like in its richness of 
shadow. ‘T'here is no reading light within doors 
during the day. At night too often the light is 
weak, flickering, and smoky. It is much more com- 
fortable to sit around the fire and talk to the neigh- 
bors that drop in to enjoy the warmth, the glow- 
ing firelight, and the family circle. 

But cannot the state educational authorities 
remedy this condition? The State Boards of Edu- 
cation have very little authority. The State Com- 
missioner can conduct a campaign of publicity and 
expose in the State Report the shortcomings of 
any county. But who reads the State Reports? 
The Commissioner can use his personal and off- 
cial influence, and doubtless he improves many 
matters by advice and suggestion, but authority 
is largely local. Each county is its own master. 
The County Superintendent, if he examines teach- 


174 The Land of Saddle-bags 


ers and grants certificates, has more immediate 
power and influence than the whole State Board 
of Education. Eiven if the Board had large au- 
thority, it could do little until the states in which 
these mountain districts lie adopt the policy that 
the state rs a umt for education. The school funds 
are usually spent in the districts whose taxes pro- 
duce them. Thus a prosperous district can have 
adequate schools, but its poor neighbor can pro- 
cure only such schoolhouses and teachers as its 
meager taxes will supply. This is a weakness 
that should be remedied at once. As ignorance 
damages and impoverishes the whole state, im- 
provement should be undertaken by the whole 
state. There are hopeful signs of an awakening 
in some of these states. 

Kven when the State Board has sufficiently af- 
fected public opinion at large to secure advanced 
legislation, such legislation frequently remains a 
dead letter in remote districts. For instance, in a 
state whose laws require the seating of children 
so that the light shall fall upon their desks from 
the left side, nearly every school visited was dis- 
obeying the law, and the children were straining 
their eyes to read and write in the shadow. The 
public drinking cup persists in spite of state laws. 
Quarantine is regarded with the same tolerant 
contempt accorded a book of etiquette, and chil- 
dren actually broken out with measles, or even 
with small-pox, sometimes persist in coming to 


The Mountains Go to School = 178 


school. When the law is broken by such flagrant 
sins of commission, one can imagine how often 
it is ignored by sins of omission. Yet the State 
Boards are doing considerable, mostly through the 
teachers, with whom they can most readily co- 
operate. In most states the teachers must attend 
the County Institute, or the State Commissioner 
ean revoke their certificates. Sometimes local 
trustees make it difficult for them to attend, and 
occasionally insist upon the teacher ‘‘keeping 
school’’ at his own expense an extra week to make 
up for. the time lost at the Institute. The Insti- 
tute in some cases is conducted by anybody the 
County Superintendent may select, and may con- 
sequently be an empty farce. But it is usually 
made a profitable occasion. The betterment of the 
schools is coming largely through the teachers. 

The improvement of the teachers, in most cases 
their self-improvement, has made encouraging 
progress. But the aforementioned difficulties of 
congregating and communicating make even this 
step toward progress at present almost insuper- 
able. 

Consolidated schools have been built in a good 
many places, with consequent improvement in 
grading, attendance, and teaching. But consoli- 
dated schools can never be very common in the 
Mountains until there is a miracle of good roads. 

Conditions such as these have always consti- 
tuted the Macedonian call for the establishment 


176 The Land of Saddle-bags 


of special schools, whether the frontier was in 
New England, Ohio, Iowa, or Oregon. This state 
of affairs in the Mountain region has appealed to 
a score of church boards and other patriotic and 
statesmanlike groups or individuals, and more 
than two hundred schools, orphanages, academies, 
and colleges have sprung up in response. Some 
of these have recently given way before the im- 
provement of the public schools, so that now there 
are about one hundred and seventy-five schools, 
and an increasing number of community centers or 
settlements.) 

These ‘‘brought-on,’’ non-indigenous schools 
show every sort of difference in educational ideals, 
purposes, and efficiency. They range from kin- 
dergarten to college. Most of them started as ele- 
mentary schools, taking the place of the public 
schools that were not there, or were not fully 
functioning. Most of them still do very elemen- 
tary work. Some of them, striving to do the 
greatest good to the greatest number, keep the 
pupils only till they have progressed through a 
few grades and then ‘‘graduate’’ them to make 
room for others that are clamoring for admit- 
tance. 

Some have added to the teaching of the grades 
a year or two of high school, or of ‘‘normal,’’ suffi- 
cient to enable their pupils to get a third-class 
teacher’s certificate. About one third of them have 
developed into four-year secondary schools, fully 


The Mountains Go to School 177 


accredited for college entrance. Most of these 
still have a graded school attached, which serves 
the larger part of their pupils. The majority of 
these academies are in towns of one hundred and 
fifty to five hundred inhabitants. Less than a 
score are in towns of five hundred to fifteen hun- 
dred people; less than a dozen in towns as large 
as fifteen hundred. (These secondary schools gen- 
erally offer the ordinary high school studies, with 
the addition of religious instruction. heir cur- 
riculum is further modified by the fact that most 
of them are boarding schools, many exclusively so. 
This lays upon the teachers the responsibility for 
the pupils twenty-four hours per day, and gives 
far greater opportunity to mold the habits and 
thoughts through recreation, work, and social in- 
tercourse. The boarding and dormitory life in- 
volves household and garden chores, done by the 
pupils, and calls for careful and constant super- 
vision by the teachers. The students not only 
learn to work, but to enjoy work. 

/ During the last twenty-five years an increas- 
ing number of these church and independent 
schools have consciously attempted some measure 
of manual training, sometimes of the simplest. 
The boys cut the wood and kindling, feed the 
horses, hoe the garden, and bring in water. The 
girls wash dishes, sweep the floors, and perhaps 
wash and iron the clothes. Some schools with a 
well-equipped teacher give instruction in elemen- 


178 The Land of Saddle-bags 


tary carpentry to the boys, and a little more or 
less systematic instruction in cooking is some- 
times given to the larger girls. Few schools are 
equipped to give instruction in any but practical 
cooking, and this is taught as incidental to the 
necessary kitchen operation of the boarding de- 
partment. There is seldom any gas, electricity, or 
running water available, so that a laboratory for 
a cooking class calls for ingenuity and construc- 
tive skill. In spite of all difficulties, however, an 
increasing number of schools are giving more ade- 
quate instruction in cooking, sewing, the making 
of garments, millinery, carpentry, blacksmithing, . 
and the elements of agriculture. Adequate work 
in teaching mechanics or agriculture calls for such 
great expense both in equipment and operation 
that most of these schools naturally shrink from 
the investment. 

The policies of schools differ with their differ- 
ing aims. Few schools can maintain an experi- 
mental farm for pure instruction in agriculture. 
Some try to give systematic instruction while till- 
ing the land to raise the milk, corn-meal, poultry, 
egos, pork, and vegetables for the school kitchen, 
together with the necessary corn and fodder for 
the farm animals. Others give only incidental 
instruction. Their chief aim is to furnish work 
by which the pupils may earn a large part of 
their school expenses. There is great value in do- 
ing work promptly, thoroughly, and cheerfully. 


The Mountans Go to School 179 


But we ought not to delude ourselves into speak- 
ing of such work as vocational training. A 
standardization of terms is much needed. It would 
doubtless be humiliating to some of us at first, 
but it would be a great help towards honest 
and earnest progress. Household chores should 
not be called Home Economics. Garden chores 
should not be confused with a course in Agri- 
culture. The term Manual Training should not be 
stretched to cover splitting wood, hoeing corn, or 
patching the fence to keep out the hogs. These 
are honest and important activities, thoroughly 
worth teaching. But pretentious titles will inevi- 
tably transform them into shoddy and shame- 
faced trifling. 

In every community there are a few people that 
long for better schooling than the local public 
school can give their children. Such parents 
eagerly grasp the opportunity to send a boy or 
girl to these boarding schools established in an 
adjoining county by some ‘‘good women,’’ or to 
‘‘Professor So-and-so’s college,’’ the latter being , 
a ‘‘collection,’’? not of buildings nor of teachers, 
but of pupils. The problem before the teachers of 
these schools is stupendous, and it is the greater 
because each school is facing it alone. There has 
been almost no concerted action. Educators in the 
most favored places are sometimes appalled by the 
magnitude of their task. We hear everywhere 
the complaint that the schools do not fit pupils 


180 The Land of Saddle-bags 


for actual life, that. there is too great a gulf be- 
tween the sheltered school and the work-a-day 
world. How much wider must the gulf be when 
the world is a century further away? 

It is evident to the thoughtful observer that a 
city-made curriculum is a poor sort of education 
to foist upon people that are rural, intensely rural, 
rural almost beyond description. On the other 
hand, what is needed is not training to fit and 
shape them to their rural habitat, but true educa- 
tion, individual personal development, which will 
prepare them for any enviroment by teaching them 
to know thoroughly their present environment and 
how to make it serve ideal and spiritual purposes. 

The people that are teaching in the Mountains 
are divided in opinion as to what the program of 
education should be. This difference seems, how- 
ever, to be virtually the same difference that exists 
elsewhere. The advocates of traditional education 
claim that it makes for culture and the richest use 
of leisure. Their opponents insist upon train- 
ing people to perform easily and efficiently all the 
ordinary work of the world. But generally speak- 
ing, the training so far has been only for the kind 
of work found in cities. There has been little 
or no training for rural work and rural life. 

The curriculum that has held the recognized 
place in American schooling was founded upon 
the city civilization of Greece, and the city civili- 
zation of Rome. It is a citified education, and is 


The Mountains Go to School 181 


admirably framed to draw young people away 
from the country into city life. There has been 
up to the present no curriculum adapted to rural 
schools that has won wide acceptance. 

It might, therefore, be naturally expected that 
most of the cultured people coming into the Moun- 
tains to teach would unconsciously use the same 
methods and the same material to which they were 
themselves accustomed. This material and these 
methods, even with individual minor adjustments, 
are poorly adapted to the super-rural conditions 
in the Mountain area. They either urge the Moun- 
tain pupil away from the Mountains or over- 
whelm him with hopeless discouragement. In 
either case they unfit him to remain at home. | 

Other teachers, in a reaction from all this, advo- 
cate training the Mountain student to fit him for 
his life conditions. But who is to decide what 
his life conditions are to be? What right have 
we to decide that he must remain forever in the 
Mountains? Training makes a man more efficient, 
but it tends to make him more of a machine. The 
fundamental difference between training and edu- 
cation lies just here. To train a man is to fit him 
for a definite task, to make a specific article, to 
carry through a certain process. The manu- 
facture is the important thing, the man is inci- 
dental to it. The trainer does not ask what is best 
for the man, but what is best for the business. 
Education, on the other hand, cares first of all for 


182 The Land of Saddle-bags 


the man, the woman, the child. Its aimis to develop 
him to his best, to help him to his full growth, to 
awaken every aspiration of which he is capable, to 
arouse every energy in him. The supreme aim of 
education is to create or develop a complete, well- 
rounded, joyful personality, sensitive to every 
aspect of his multiplex environment. Education is 
not principally interested in manufacture, com- 
merce, or the bread-and-butter arts. Of course 
every man must earn his living, but after all, 
bread-and-butter is only secondary. If a man 
learns and masters his environment, he has 
mastered the provision problem and a great deal 
more. Kducation must fit him for the whole of 
life, and not merely for the procuring of food and 
raiment. | 

A man’s joys must always be procurable from 
his present environment, his ideals must always 
come from beyond it. The rainbow’s rim must 
always be a little behind his horizon. A little! 
But in the case of the Mountaineer, if the gulf is 
to be bridged, the foot of the rainbow will be 
not a little, but a long way beyond his present 
horizon. Very few of these schools feel quite 
sure that they know how to fit their students for 
any place that life may call them to occupy. For 
Mountain men are found in every state of the 
Union, filling important positions, with notable 
ability. | 

But you say that these are the exceptions, that 


The Mountans Go to School 183 


we ought not to shape our educational program 
for them. Let us grant the point. Yet ought we 
not to prepare the pupils to occupy just as im- 
portant positions within the Mountains? And if 
there are no such places because of backward 
conditions, should we not so help to develop the 
communities that in the advancing civilization or 
socialization such positions will emerge? The 
unusual situation in the Mountains doubles the 
task educationally, but it does not release us from 
obligation. We must devise education not only 
for the boys and girls, but also for the community. 
Too many schools and colleges have eyes only 
upon the students admitted into their halls. They 
feel no responsibility toward the community, no 
obligation toward those unable to pass their en- 
trance examinations. They are aware of the com- 
munity only as a place whence they may gather 
their pupils. The great need of an undeveloped 
people, of a pioneer community, is a thoroughgoing 
school that keeps its eyes upon the whole com- 
munity, not merely upon those that manage to 
scramble to its campus. 

The gravest educational problem in any com- 
munity centers about those not quite able to make 
their grade, those not able to pass the examina- 
tions in the eighth grade, or high school, or college, 
or medical, or law school, as the case may be. We 
have done the easiest thing when we furnish 
instruction merely for the eager and ambitious 


184 The Land of Saddle-bags 


young people, who would go ahead in some fashion 
even without our help. 

The school, like the church, should minister to 
the whole community in everything that tends to 
growth, to learning, to self-improvement, to bread, 
beauty, truth, and brotherhood. A number of 
schools in recognition of this community need have 
established extension departments, or have at least 
provided an extension worker. 

In the majority of cases the term ‘‘extension’”’ 
does not mean what those familiar with extension 
classes elsewhere would suppose. The conditions 
of travel, or more accurately of non-travel, in the 
Mountain area, preclude large or regular groups 
of extension classes. An extension worker could 
not visit class groups twice a week or even twice 
a month. Two visits a year are more than many 
extension workers achieve. This precludes the 
organization of classes, and reduces extension 
work to more or less irregular and intermittent 
lectures. 

With all his equipment in saddle-bags, an ex- 
tension lecturer rides twenty or thirty miles 
through mud and rain. After a hospitable supper, 
he addresses a little group who have gathered to 
hear the ‘‘speakin’.’’ He speaks on the impor- 
tance of good roads, or better schools, or pure- 
bred hogs and cows, or the value of legumes and 
clovers in improving the soil. Perhaps he has a 
set of small charts or pictures to show the con- 


The Mountains Go to School  .185 


ditions of good health and the inroads of disease. 
Occasionally he manages to carry a tiny stereopti- 
con and throws pictures on a borrowed sheet. 

Perhaps the most striking achievement in the 
field of education that has been seen in the Moun- 
tains in recent years is the Moonlight School. In 
1911 Mrs. Cora Wilson Stewart was Superintend- 
ent of the Rowan County Schools in Kentucky. 
A woman living seven miles distant, who could 
not read, sometimes came with a letter from her 
daughter in Chicago, who had studied in a night 
school. Mrs. Stewart read her the letters from 
Jane, and, as the mother dictated, wrote an answer. 
One day the mother appeared with a new dignity. 
‘‘T kin read now,’’ she said. She had actually 
taught herself from a speller. A few days later, 
in the Superintendent’s office, a man was finger- 
ing a book. Mrs. Stewart noticed him, and offered 
to lend the book to him. ‘‘I cain’t read or write. 
I’d give twenty years of my life if I could.’’ 
There were in Rowan County 1152 men and women 
that could not read or write. With Jane’s mother 
in mind, it flashed into Mrs. Stewart’s mind that 
elderly people can learn to read. And, by natural 
association of ideas, they can be taught at a night 
school. 

In the Mountains, travel at night, even in good 
weather, is difficult, and in many places it is 
dangerous—except on moonlight nights. Moon- 
light nights! Why not see how much they could 


186 The Land of Saddle-bags 


learn in the pleasant autumn weather, before the 
roads became mere quagmires? 

The teachers of the county were called together, 
and the matter was laid before them. Every 
teacher volunteered to teach four nights a week 
for three weeks—of course without pay. They 
agreed to spend Labor Day making a canvass of 
their districts, inviting everybody that wanted 
to learn to come to school. On the fifth of 
September the teachers were all at their schools 
after supper. They expected perhaps a hundred 
and fifty would-be students. T'welve hundred came. 
Their ages ranged from eighteen to eighty-six. 
Only one third were unable to read or write. Of 
these, some learned to write their names that 
first evening. A Bible was offered as a prize to 
each person that learned to write a letter in 
the first eight evenings. During the twelve even- 
ings of the first session of Moonlight Schools three 
hundred learned to read and write. One man of 
thirty learned to write a legible letter in four even- 
ings. A man of fifty did it in seven evenings, a 
woman of seventy accomplished it in eight even- 
ings. A father and mother, with fourteen children 
and eighty-four grandchildren, both learned to 
read and write, and this gave great joy and new 
dignity to their absent loved ones in various states. 

The next year, in 1912, two sessions of three 
weeks each were held in the moonlight of two 
successive months. Sixteen hundred persons 


The Mountans Go to School 187 


attended these two sessions, and three hundred 
and fifty learned to read and write. 

During the third year, 1913, all but twenty- 
three of the remaining illiterates in the com- 
munity learned to read and write. Six of these 
were blind or nearly so, six imbecile or epileptic, 
five were bedfast, two were new arrivals, and 
four stubbornly refused to try. 

One of these four was in a district where there 
were 116 adults. The teacher, a young man 
whose home was in the district, enrolled 111 of 
these adults in the Moonlight School. This in- 
cluded fifteen of the sixteen illiterates. He had 
urged one old woman in vain. Now it happened 
that she was a ‘‘yarb-doctor.’’ When the young 
teacher developed an eruption on his wrist, he 
went to her and asked whether she could give 
him some ‘‘yarb-tea’’ to cure it. While the 
mollified ‘‘doctor’’ treated him for erysipelas, he 
treated her for illiteracy, and she learned to read 
and write. 

By this time twenty-five other counties, en- 
couraged by Rowan County’s example, had 
started Moonlight Schools. 

Then in 1914, the Governor, by authority of 
the State Assembly, appointed an [literacy 
Commission for the State of Kentucky, the first 
in the United States. Very soon many states 
followed Kentucky’s example, and an enthusiastic 
attempt was started to wipe out the five and a 


188 The Land of Saddle-bags 


half million illiterates from the nation’s popu- 
lation. Before 1920 over fifteen thousand illiter- 
ates in the Mountain counties of Kentucky had 
learned to read and write. 

The Moonlight Schools in many places revealed 
a new community spirit, the spirit of intelligent 
cooperation. There was a remarkable loyalty in 
the teachers and an equally remarkable loyalty 
in the people to follow such unanimous leader- 
ship. 


The Religion of a Stalwart People 


The Religion of a Stalwart People 


ITH all its limitations the Moun- 

tain church has been a conserver 
of the best in Mountain life, and is yet 
the best organized Mountain agency for 
the promotion of spiritual growth. 


JoHN C. CAMPBELL 


CHAPTER EIGHT 
The Religion of a Stalwart People 


HE Mountain People are unusually reli- 
gious. Their religion, it is true, is not 
very dainty. It is the religion of a stal- 
wart, independent people. If occasionally there 
is some admixture in it that might disturb re- 
fined appetites, let us remember that Cromwell’s 
Ironsides also had some over-robust, not to say 
disagreeable, qualities, yet they were unquestion- 
ably devout and heroic men. No student of hu- 
man nature will sneer at the sincere religion of 
the fierce men who followed Gideon or King 
David, the psalmist. 

The Mountain man has an inherited conviction 
of God, a vivid sense of His management of the 
world. You would probably call him a fatalist. 
He bears disappointment or sorrow quietly. 
‘‘Hit was to be, I reckon.’? His mind is still 
tinctured very strongly with the Calvinism of his 
foreparents. 

These foreparents were, for the most part, 
Scotch Presbyterians from the north of Ireland. 
Mingled with them were smaller streams of 
French Huguenots, even more purely Calvinistic 
than the Scots; Palatine Germans, also vigor- 
ously Calvinistic; English Independents, a few 


Quakers, and a sprinkling from the Church of 
191 


192 The Land of Saddle-bags 


England, the Mennonites, and the Moravian 
Brethren. 

Almost all of these endured severe persecu- 
tion on account of their persecutors’ notions of 
religion. It is therefore natural that in the 
Mountains denominational lines should stand out 
strongly. These lines may not in these days be 
strongly emphasized in the community in which 
you live; you may even venture to cross denomi- 
national barriers and marry somebody in a dif- 
ferent church. But in the Mountains, denomina- 
tional antagonism is the survival of a life-and- 
death division. Its roots go back to the days of 
Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary, and Gustavus 
Adolphus. In those days a difference of denomi- 
nation meant being tortured or burnt alive, and 
the forefathers of these people actually suffered 
thus. So the slaughter at Drumclog and Saint 
Bartholomew’s got into their blood and their 
vague but persistent suspicion of Roman Catholi- 
cism is an honestly inherited instinct wrought into 
all their ancestral memories. 

Before the death of Washington there were at 
least a hundred and forty Presbyterian congre- 
gations in the Mountains. The mode of worship 
and church management of both the German and 
French Protestants was similar to the Presby- 
terian, so they readily joined with them. 

In Virginia the Church of England, or Epis- 
copal Church, was the established state church, 


The Religion of a Stalwart’ People 193 


supported by taxation. But the Scotch-Irish on 
the mountainous western frontier were so useful 
in repelling Indian attacks, and they were, be- 
sides, so far away, that their divergence from 
Episcopal usages seemed as unimportant as their 
other uncivilized wilderness ways. Many of their 
churches were therefore registered and their 
ministers licensed. Indeed, the vestries of estab- 
lished churches sometimes consisted wholly of 
Presbyterians. A church was established by the 
approval of the Governor, and the members of 
its vestry appointed by him or his counsellors. 
Thereafter, the members of the vestry elected 
their own successors. The Governor naturally 
appointed the men whose names were signed to 
the petition without very close scrutiny as to their 
religious opinions. 

As the Revolutionary War progressed, the de- 
sire for freedom was strengthened, and increas- 
ing objection was made against taxing the whole 
people to support any particular church. So the 
Hpiscopal Church was disestablished in 1785. At 
that time many of the established churches in the 
western reaches of Virginia were found to be 
wholly Presbyterian. 

But if the Mountain People were originally so 
unanimously Presbyterian, how comes it that to- 
day they are so overwhelmingly Immersionists? 

Several factors have united to bring about this 
result. 


194 The Land of Saddle-bags 


(1) The very great emphasis the Presbyterian 
Assembly laid upon ‘‘thoroughly educated’’ min- 
isters made it impossible to secure enough ‘‘thor- 
oughly educated,’’ venturesome, and comfort-de- 
fying men to supply the religious needs of the 
‘scattered wilderness dwellers. After long years 
of severe schooling, ministers acquired habits of 
settled study. A wandering preacher who carries 
his hbrary in his saddle-bags, and whose study is 
anywhere ‘‘under his hat,’’? seemed to the Presby- 
terians not to be taking his vocation seriously. 
It was a trifling with the profound and unfathom- 
able mysteries of religion. 

It was, therefore, difficult to find among the 
meticulously trained Presbyterians enough men 
of a rough-and-ready disposition to serve the 
growing needs of this wilderness ministry. 

(2) The requirement of a long classical edu- 
cation, possible only by going a great distance, to- 
gether with the lack of preparatory schools, made 
a native Presbyterian ministry impossible. No 
church can live entirely upon an imported minis- 
try. Those denominations which ordained to the 
ministry the most suitable men to be found in 
the community, even if they could scarcely read 
and write, were sure to grow. Only such men, 
themselves born and bred among the hardy pio- 
neers, could long endure the rough life of a 
wilderness preacher. And strange to say, their 
influence among the frontiersmen was greater 


The Religion of a Stalwart People 195 


man for man than that of the more learned but 
less approachable college-trained ministers. 
After the great awakening, under the preaching 
of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield in 
1740-45, a great many uneducated men felt the 
impulse to preach and win men from wickedness. 
It was then easy to find able and enthusiastic 
converts eager to ride from one sparse settlement 
to another as the authorized heralds of the Cross. 
Their emphasis was upon experience rather than 
theory. Their theological tenets were of the 
simplest, and were quite definite, not to say literal. 
Their shrewd sense and rough sympathy, their 
ready wit and homely eloquence, made their ‘‘ap- 
pintments’’ a welcome event in every settlement. 
They felt at home in the rough surroundings and 
the unlearned settlers felt at home with them. 
(3) There arose in New England, after this 
great awakening, an insistent movement in what 
was there the recognized church (Congrega- 
tional) against admitting to church membership 
persons that were respectable but ‘‘unregener- 
ate.’’ Those who took this stand soon came, 
logically enough, to question the validity of in- 
fant baptism. These Congregationalists who 
wanted Christians to ‘‘separate themselves from 
the world,’’ were called Separates. In 1751 the 
Reverend Shubael Stearns, with Daniel Marshall 
and a dozen fellow-believers, left Boston and went 
to North Carolina where by his great evangelistic 


196 The Land of Saddle-bags 


power he built up a church of six hundred mem- 
bers. His enthusiasm for a pure church, to con- 
sist only of converted members, was perhaps ex- 
ceeded only by his fervent opposition to state 
control of religion. This opposition called forth 
a ready response from all Mountain men, whether 
they agreed with his ‘‘quar’’ religious notions or 
not. 

The recognition of Stearns and of his co- 
workers as champions against the tyranny of the 
State church taxation probably accounts in part 
for the tremendous growth of the Separates. 
They were now as often called Separate Baptists 
as Separate Congregationalists, and worked 
shoulder to shoulder with the Regular Baptists 
in advocating religious equality and the disestab- 
lishment of the State church. Very soon after 
this division was accomplished, these two immer- 
sionist bodies united, dropping the words ‘‘Sep- 
arate’’ and ‘‘Regular.”’ 

The Presbyterians had either been granted a 
large measure of religious freedom, or had quietly 
taken it, so that, not being in the teeth of persecu- 
tion, they were not so noticeably identified with 
the clamor for hberty. Indeed, their possession 
of some of the established vestries, and the fact 
that certain of their ministers were licensed by 
the obnoxious opponents of liberty tended to align 
them, in the popular mind, among the aristocracy. 
In those excited years the sheer democracy of the 


The Religion of a Stalwart People 197 


Baptist church government, the absolute like- 
mindedness of the rude preachers with their un- 
lettered audience, and the vivid dramatic appeal 
of immersion made a tremendous impression upon 
the Mountain people. Since the Immersionists 
did not contradict any doctrinal teaching of the 
Presbyterians, their obstacles were few, and as 
their rough wandering preachers far outnum- 
bered the carefully ordained Presbyterians, they 
gradually supplanted that less robustious de- 
nomination. 

Turning to the religious situation today: If we 
take the circumstances into consideration, it is 
natural that the emphasis should be less upon the 
church as an organization than as an audience 
called together to hear a preacher. It is common 
to have preaching only once a month. There is 
very little church machinery. The preacher is 
the core of it all. 

Though the theology of the preachers is severe 
and even harsh, it is frequently mitigated by a 
sense of humor, and the older preachers have 
often a gentle and kindly wisdom, distilled from 
their long service. Striking and memorable ex- 
periences are expected to accompany conversion. 
The sinner must labor under conviction as a pre- 
liminary. Then, after prolonged and sometimes 
intense wrestling in prayer, he ‘‘comes through,’’ 
receiving assurance of salvation, preferably by 
some notable or strange token. ‘‘I prayed all 


198 The Land of Saddle-bags 


night under yan plum tree, and at the first streak 
of dawn, I got peace, and afore sun-up, I tell ye, 
that old plum tree were jest one solid blowth 0’ 
blossoms.’’ 

The Mountain man enjoys theological debate. 
After a three-days’ meeting at Macedonia Church- 
house, mostly a debate on predestination and 
free will, the discomfited preacher came over to 
see the Professor and get, if possible, some better 
theological ammunition for the next attack. 

‘‘T thort I had him, shore, Perfess’r. I said, 
‘If a man is drowndin’ in the river and ye throw 
him a rope, he’s got to use his free will and grab 
that rope, or he cain’t be saved.’ But that feller 
jest pounded the pulpitt and said that weren’t no 
argyment. ‘If that man in the river was a corpse, 
dead in trespasses and sins, he eouldn’t grab no 
rope, without a work of divine grace.’ ”’ 

This lucid counter-illustration evidently carried 
the day. 

The attention of the Mountain People is largely 
caught by the mysterious or the magnificent. The 
unexpected approach of Death, the accurately de- 
tailed horrors of the Judgment, the somewhat 
sentimental satisfactions of Heaven, these are 
favorite topics. 

They are fond also of texts that admit of in- 
genious interpretations. ‘‘Upon this rock I will 
build my church, and the gates of hell shall not 
prevail against it. That’s the good old Babtis’ 


The Religion of a Stalwart People 199 


church, the original 'T'wo-seed-in-the-Sperrit 
Hardshell Babtis’ church. The Bible says John 
the Babtis’ belonged to hit. And the gates of hell 
shall not pervail against hit.’’ There is a mysti- 
cal fascination in the announced topic ‘‘ Melchiz- 
edek, and the office-work of the Sperrit,’’ and 
one’s curiosity is not completely satisfied even 
after hearing the sermon. 

Sermons are often delivered in a sort of mono- 
toned ecstasy. This produces in many of the 
hearers a temporary semi-hypnotic state. There 
is little connection between it and their daily life. 
Their emotions may be powerfully stirred, but 
there is too frequently no issuance in action. 

The old ignorant preacher who publicly thanks 
God because he cannot read, who prefers to open 
his mouth and challenge God to fill it with a mes- 
sage far more authoritative than that of book- 
preachers—this type is rapidly passing away. 
Now he is more likely to conceal his inability to 
read. ‘‘My tex’ air som’ers in the Bible. I ain’t 
a-goin’ to tell ye whar. Ye can jest read tell ye 
find hit. And ye’ll find a heap more that’s full 
as good.”’ 

Outsiders going to a church-house in the Moun- 
tains to attend a meeting have been unduly dis- 
turbed at seeing people go in and out freely dur- 
ing the service. And they have been shocked at 
the unspiritual, or, shall we say, unrespectable 
conduct of some of the men, who apparently 


200 The Land of Saddle-bags 


deliberately walk out of the church to trade horses 
under the shelter of a near-by tree. 

To leave a service before the benediction is, of 
course, inexcusable conduct in a city church, 
where the pastor has been called with the explicit 
or implicit) understanding that he shall never 
preach a sermon longer than twenty-five minutes. 

But in the remote Mountain churches members 
have not exercised such sagacious foresight. 
Their preachers are not hampered ‘by suburban 
time-tables. It sometimes takes them as long as 
twenty-five minutes merely to ‘‘git hmbered up 
and goin’ smooth.’’ One can scarcely expect the 
sonorous repetends of rhythmic and resonant 
eloquence to unroll themselves in staccato head- 
lines. In any case, the Mountain preacher is too 
independent to yield to the domination of the pew. 
And the pew would never dream of demanding 
it. Mountain folk believe in fair play. Let the 
preacher talk as long as he pleases. That is his 
privilege. Whenever any auditor has had enough, 
let him get up and go out. That is his privilege. 
There may be some people (evidently there are) 
that would be much annoyed if an influential com- 
mittee stopped the soaring flight of eloquence in 
mid-career. Leave them to enjoy the eagle flight. 
Since the first preacher occupied more than an 
hour, and the second has just begun, go out and 
rest your wearied mind under a tree. You can 
go back for another spell of preaching later. 


The Religion of a Stalwart People 201 


For there are three preachers sitting on the 
narrow bench behind the pulpit. And after each 
of them has had his turn, the presiding minister 
will ask if anyone else feels called to speak. If 
anyone does feel this inward urge, he ought, of 
course, to have freedom to speak. But it is recog- 
nized that the auditors also should have freedom, 
freedom to go elsewhere, while he disburdens his 
mind. If the preachers form a combination and 
‘“spell each other’’ in preaching, surely the people 
may also ‘‘spell each other’’ in listening. 

There is a home-like simplicity in the meeting. 
A water pail is filled at the spring and set on the 
edge of the platform with a dipper therein. Dur- 
ing the preaching, the auditors (especially 
mothers with little children) do not hesitate to go 
forward and drink. 

When a convert wishes baptism, the congrega- 
tion goes down to a pool in the creek. There is 
always an interested crowd, the older folk look- 
ing on with sympathetic approval, the young folk 
with alert curiosity. The preacher wades out till 
he finds ‘‘good bottom,’’ then calls the convert to 
come down into the ‘‘waters of baptism,’’ some- 
times with stately and symbolic phrase. After 
immersion they go home without changing gar- 
ments, unless someone has come a long distance, 
when he may put on dry clothes at a near-by 
house. 

The ‘‘good old Baptis’ ’’ churches still practice 


202 The Land of Saddle-bags 


foot-washing. If the ceremony is to take place 
in the church-house, the church-members are in- 
vited to come forward to the front benches. The 
Elder (as they usually call the minister) takes 
the basin and towel and begins the ceremony by 
washing the feet of some of the men, they in turn 
washing others. The women wash each other’s 
feet. Sometimes for this ordinance also the 
congregation goes to the edge of a near-by creek 
and the rite is performed with less ceremony. 

It is noticeable that most of those participating 
are elderly. The members generally are on the 
shady side of life. Children and young folks can 
scarcely have had sufficient experience, in the hey- 
day of their youth, to join the church. 

Another fact ought to command our respect. 
These old Mountain preachers serve without pay. 
They work on their little upright farms, or in the 
blacksmith shop, or at ‘‘public works,’’ like their 
neighbors, and earn their own living. Then they 
take the horse out of the plow, throw on the sad- 
dle and travel many miles to reach their ‘‘Sun- 
day appintment.’’ 

One very obvious reason why so much of the 
preaching deals with death is the Mountain cus- 
tom of ‘‘preaching funerals.’’ The burial, of 
course, takes place immediately after death, but 
the funeral is ‘‘preached’’ in the early Autumn, 
when the weather is good, the cultivation of the 
crops is finished, the water in the creeks is at the 


The Religion of a Stalwart People 203 


lowest, and the kinsfolk and friends can gather 
for a fitting memorial. The chosen preacher takes 
the text selected by the departed, or, in the case 
of sudden death, a text chosen by the family. 
The choir, perhaps organized for this one occa- 
sion, sings the favorite hymns and perhaps one 
specially chosen on the deathbed. 

The following words will give some suggestion 
of the awesome mood of the songs frequently sung 
at these services. But nothing can give an ade- 
quate idea of the piercingly mournful cadence, or 
of the quivering personal emotion expressed in the 
voices of the singers. 


O ye young, ye gay, ye proud! 

You must die and wear the shroud. 
Time will rob you of your bloom, 
Death will drag you to your tomb; 
Then you'll ery, I want to be 
Happy in Eternity. 


Will you go to heaven or hell? 
One you must, and there to dwell. 
Christ will come, and quickly too, 
I must meet him, so must you; 
Then you'll ery, I want to be 
Happy in Eternity. 


The judgment throne will soon appear— 
All this world shall then draw near. 
Sinners will be driven down, 

Saints will wear a starry crown; 

Then you'll cry, I want to be 

Happy in Eternity. 


204 The Land of Saddle-bags 


Another custom peculiar to the Mountain People 
is the ‘‘decorating’’ of burial grounds, a com- 
munity celebration which has no apparent con- 
nection with the well-known memorial services for 
old soldiers. It is celebrated on any date con- 
venient for the locality. The preceding day men 
meet at the cemetery to mow the briers, cut down 
the brush, and clean out the fence corners around 
the graves. The next day the people bring flowers 
to decorate all the graves. This done, the choir, 
having practiced for the occasion, sings the old 
familiar hymns, and, if ambitious, renders some- 
thing resembling an anthem. If a preacher is 
present, of course he ‘‘improves’’ the occasion. 

Religion in the Mountains, as elsewhere, is far 
more personal than public. ‘‘We shore ort to do 
what the Good Book tells us.’’ ‘‘The Lord’ll give 
us stren’th to bar whatever’s laid on us, Il 
reckon.’’ ‘‘Hit’s a sight how the Lord helps a 
body if ye trustes Him, Honey.’’ And if the faith 
that an outsider hears voiced expresses more of 
resignation than of hope and joy, it is not the 
Mountaineer’s religion that is at fault so much 
as the situation that bears so heavily and so un- 
escapably upon their lives that in its clutches 
resignation becomes the primary Christian virtue. 


Health and Happiness 


Health and Happiness 


O Mountaineer closes a door behind 

him. As a class they have great 
restless physical energy. Considering the 
quantity and quality of what they eat, 
there is no people who can beat them 
in endurance of strain and privation. In 
spite of such apparent “toughness” the 
Mountaineers are not a notably healthy 
people. ... That the hill folk remain a 
rugged and hardy people in spite of un- 
sanitary conditions ... is due chiefly to 
their love of pure air and pure water. 


HorACE KEPHART 
Our Southern Highlanders 


CHAPTER NINE 
Health and Happiness 


Le OME right in, Miz Lombard. You ketch’d 
me this time shore. I’m mightily tore 
up, and everything ontidy, but I’ll find ye 

a chair. 

‘‘T been up the holler, sittin’ up all night with 
Sally Ann’s baby. Hit’s jest a week old. 

‘‘Yes, mighty puny. Atter I’d studied on it con- 
sid’able, I "lowed hit’s head were sprung, so I 
bound its head with a cloth I tore up. 

‘Then I thought maybe hit were liver-growed. 
You don’t know what that is? Well, you take the 
child by the right hand and left heel, and make 
’em touch behind. Then I tuk the left hand and 
right heel and they wouldn’t touch. So I jest 
pulled. The child cried mightily, but I knowed 
hit had to be done. 

‘‘Then hit looked hivey to me, so I gien it teas 
all night. Shore enough, agin mornin’ thar was 
the hives out plumb thick. 

‘*Hit’s a mighty sick child yit, but with its head 
bound up, its liver let loose, and its hives out, hit 
stands a good chance to git well. 

‘‘T hain’t had time to redd my hair. I had to 
pack my own baby home afore sun-up, and git the 
breakfast. I’m pint-blank drug out, but I shan’t 


keer nary grain if Sally Ann’s baby lives.’’ 
207 


208 The Land of Saddle-bags 


Good health is the basis of a sound economic 
condition in either an individual or a community. 
And a healthy economic life is the foundation for 
social and spiritual progress. It is true wisdom 
to scrutinize the conditions that affect a people’s 
health. 

Housing, food, and sanitation are not mere 
fads. They are matters of prime importance. 

Log houses are comfortable and sanitary—if 
they are made so. The Mountain man, having 
threaded his way into the wilderness, naturally 
built his house of logs. In places remote from 
sawmills, the builder is still in pioneer conditions. 
Even on the outskirts of towns the man with little 
money today cuts down suitable trees, hews two 
sides of each log flat, notches the ends, and invites 
his neighbors to help with the house-raising. The 
corner-men fit the notches together as the logs are 
lifted or slid up to the top of the walls. After the 
top sills are laid, the rafters are put in place, and 
the owner can finish the house himself. 

The space between the logs is filled with chips 
and stones plastered together with mud or mor- 
tar. A fireplace is built of stones, or sometimes 
of small tree-trunks lined with mud. If there is 
no sawmill near, the floor may be made of pun- 
cheons, trees eight or ten inches in diameter split 
in two and laid flat side up. Such a floor is rough 
and almost impossible to sweep. Such a house, 
built green, shrinks, warps, and sags. Cracks 


Health and Happiness — 209 


open everywhere, in walls, floor, and even in the 
roof. In winter one must draw the little hickory 
split chair close to the hearth, for most of the heat 
from the great glowing fire goes up the chimney. 

The house may have a small window-sash im- 
movably built in. Often there is none. The 
woman cooks breakfast before sun-up, and supper 
after dark, by the smoky light of a tiny kerosene 
lamp with no chimney. It is difficult to carry 
lamp chimneys long distances in saddle-bags. 
There are many homes where even the moderate 
luxury of kerosene is not found. A sliver of pine 
knot gives an even more smoky light, and occa- 
sionally a ‘‘ladle’’ is used. It is preferably made 
by a blacksmith, an iron saucer with a handle to 
hang it by. Narrow strips of cotton cloth, twisted 
or plaited together, are laid in the ladle in grease. 
The end of the rag is hung over the edge and 
ignited. Its illumination is not measured in can- 
dle power. 

There are no built-in conveniences. <A. dried 
gourd hung on a nail will hold salt; another, 
sugar; a shelf or two forms the kitchen cabinet. 
Pegs or spikes are driven into the logs for the 
family wardrobe, besides which there is a large 
box, and sometimes a home-made chest of drawers. 

During the day the door usually stands open a 
good deal, summer and winter. At night it 1s 
closed, and the room is occupied by an incredible 
number of persons. With a large fire-place, there 


210 The Land of Saddle-bags 


is, of course, some ventilation, but where stoves 
have come in, the air becomes very foul. Hven 
when, by adding more rooms, the one-room cabin 
has become a large rambling house, the people 
crowd into very few rooms. In a house having 
at least eight rooms, the wife and mother still has 
two double beds in her own bedroom, and this 
continues to be the family sitting-room, while the 
added rooms remain unused. No wonder a woman 
once said to me, ‘‘What we have a-plenty of is 
inconveniences.”’ 

Under such conditions, common cleanliness is 
often impossible. But even when the homes are 
scrupulously clean, there is seldom any knowledge 
of what constitutes sanitary cleanliness. They 
have no conception of the causes of disease nor 
of the means by which it is spread. This, added 
to a very common scepticism about infection and 
sanitary precautions, opens the door to typhoid, 
tuberculosis, trachoma, hook-worm, pelagra, and 
other insidious diseases. The sick and the well 
sleep together, and use towels, combs, and drink- 
ing dippers in common. The latter, indeed, are 
used also by any passer-by who stops for a drink. 

The moment anyone is sick enough to be bed- 
fast, all the neighbors come in and sit by the hour 
to show their neighborly sympathy. Quarantine 
is unknown and would probably be resented as in- 
terfering with personal liberty. Refuse and waste 
water are thrown out, to be carried away on the 


Health and Happiness epae: 


feet, or to seep into the near-by creek, and thus 
be carried to every family lower down the stream. 
The rapid spread of communicable diseases is 
thus to be expected. 

Mountain People are usually very particular 
about the water they drink. They generally pre- 
fer spring water, and are emphatically partial to 
the peculiar taste of their own spring or well, be 
the taste that of sulphur, soapstone, limestone, 
freestone, or merely clear and cold. Like all 
other people that have not been educated in sani- 
tary precautions, they do not consider water to be 
polluted so long as it is sparkling and clear. ‘‘ Hit 
bubbles right out’n the ground, hit’s bound to be 
puore.’’ 

The average cooking is bad and renders the 
food unwholesome. The frying pan is the most 
common weapon, though a stew-pot is a close sec- 
ond. In combination with the poor cooking, the 
restricted diet is responsible for a depleted physi- 
eal condition. The range of foodstuffs is far too 
narrow for good health. ‘‘Bread’’ and ‘‘meat’’ 
are the staples of diet. This means corn and pork. 
The poorest renter or squatter plans to ‘‘raise 
me acrap’’ or to ‘‘raise me some bread’’ by which 
is always meant corn. And usually he slaughters 
a hog or two for his ‘‘meat.’’ This, salted and 
sometimes smoked, provides the necessary supply 
of bacon, ‘‘ham-meat,’’ and lard. A family with 
a supply of bread and meat faces the winter with- 


oie The Land of Saddle-bags 


out anxiety. At least they will not starve. If 
further provender can be laid up, so much the 
better. They may ‘‘hole up’’ in the garden a 
pyramid of potatoes, another of cabbage, and an- 
other of turnips, and dig them out when the larder 
runs low. 

Kvery family has chickens, but the hawks and 
the ‘‘varmints’’?’ (minks, weasels, skunks, and 
rats) get a large share of them. There are not 
many for the table. Eggs are not used so freely 
as they should be; too often they find their way 
to the store as barter for groceries, patent medi- 
cines, or feminine trinkets such as needles, but- 
tons and thread, snuff and tobacco. 

Milk forms a far smaller proportion of the 
family diet than one would expect, considering 
the fact that every family has one or more cows. 
But the difficulty of keeping milk sweet, and the 
habit of churning the milk (not the cream) every 
morning largely removes ‘‘sweet milk’’ from the 
dietary. Indeed the term ‘‘milk’’ usually means 
buttermilk. 

A dietary meager in essential qualities and 
sometimes insufficient in amount lowers the vi- 
tality in many cases beyond the safe margin of 
disease resistance. Typhoid, for instance, is com- 
mon and fatal. The high rate of mortality from 
this disease is no surprise when one sees that no 
precautions are taken against infecting springs, 
streams, and wells; that there is no protection 





A “MEETING” AT WILDCAT MOUNTAIN 


A “meeting” is always a religious gathering; discussion of politics, 

good roads, or community betterment is a “speaking.” There is 

nothing cathedralesque about this “church house,” nor about its 

order of worship. The “preacher” comes a certain Sunday in every 

month. He usually receives no salary, working on his farm or 

in the woods during the week, and riding long distances to his 
appointments on Sunday, 





REMINDERS OF ELIZABETHAN DAYS 


Like the customs, speech, and music of the 
Mountaineer, his dulcimer and oil lamp are 
survivals of an earlier period. 





Health and Happiness aks: 


attempted against flies; and that body wastes 
from sick people are commonly scattered in the 
back yard or actually thrown into a stream.’ 

Tuberculosis is more fatal in the Mountains 
than in other rural areas, though less so, of 
course, than in cities. No precautions are taken 
because the nature of the disease and its propaga- 
tion are not yet generally known. How long is it 
since the most privileged population began to 
understand this matter? 

The reports of the Rockefeller Sanitary Com- 
mission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease 
lay great stress upon the ravages of this disease 
in the Mountain region, and the great improve- 
ment that follows treatment. It is supposed that 
the hookworms are caught by going barefoot upon 
infected or infested areas. Subsequently the vi- 
tality of the patient is sapped, and his energy 
pitiably reduced. 

‘‘Sore eyes’’ is another very common affliction 

1 There are no authorized statistics available for what we are 
discussing as The Land of Saddle-bags. Its boundaries are not 
coincident with the political boundaries of state and county. 
The facts about the Mountain counties in each state are, of 
course, merged into the general averages of that state. There 
have been a few “surveys” made by non-governmental organiza- 
tions. These usually cover one or two counties, and take account 
of only one matter, such as Child-welfare, or Trachoma, or Tuber- 
culosis, or Hookworm. 

Most of the states in which the Mountain People are located 
are vigorously working through their Boards of Public Health 
towards the improvement of the situation. Their Departments 
of Education are cooperating with the Health officers to dis- 


seminate information through the school children. It is a huge 
task, and the means of dissemination are few and slow-moving. 


214 The Land of Saddle-bags 


in some districts. Dr. McMullen, of the United 
States Public Health Service, directed a survey of 
twenty-three mountain counties in Kentucky. 
He found that seven per cent of those examined 
had trachoma. ‘‘The type of the disease found 
was severe, and its mutilating effects are seen 
everywhere. It would be difficult to appreciate 
the suffering and disastrous effects of the disease 
in Appalachian America without actually seeing 
these cases and witnessing the pathetic sights 
they present. Most of the cases have gone with- 
out proper aid, and many without any at all.’’ 
The lack of intelligent care in general is re- 
sponsible for much poor health. Every school 
survey or community clinic reveals a deplorable 
number suffering physical pain or mental detri- 
ment from neglected teeth, adenoids, or diseased 
tonsils. But trained physicians are scarce, the 
distances they must ride are great, and the roads 
all but impassable except in summer. In the re- 
moter areas physicians are seldom called. They 
live commonly at the county seat, perhaps fifteen 
miles away. If a physician is summoned by mes- 
senger, a long time elapses before he can reach 
the patient. It is a day’s journey for the mes- 
senger, and another for the doctor. The obvious 
result of these conditions is that the doctor is not 
summoned until the neighbors have ‘‘tried every- 
thing on top side of the yearth’’ and have given 
up hope of curing the patient. Naturally when 


Health and Happiness 215 





at last the doctor is called, it is frequently too 
late. 

Mothers, as a rule, have no physician’s care in 
childbirth. The midwives are ignorant, untrained 
in procedure, seldom licensed, and without the 
slightest knowledge of infection or sanitary meas- 
ures. Pre-natal care is practically unknown. 
In one survey prematurity was found to be the 
most prevalent cause of infant mortality, and 
nearly half the recorded deaths occurred within 
two weeks after birth. 

The babies are not wisely clothed, they creep 
on draughty floors and nibble at everything on the 
family table from fat pork to coffee. It is no 
wonder that there are many tiny graves in the 
cemeteries, or that many persons who do grow up 
are afflicted all through life with ‘‘a misery in the 
stummick.”’ 

Many physicians, educators, and other workers 
for community betterment are heroically attack- 
ing this problem of public health. Clinics by 
visiting physicians and surgeons at central points, 
district nurses, systematic information in schools, 
and county-wide campaigns by State Boards of 
Health, are rallying points for the countless un- 
heralded efforts that are being quietly and con- 
stantly directed against ill health. Dr. John C. 
Campbell says that during one short clinic in a 
school which has been foremost in this work, 
there were 10 major and 608 minor operations. 


216 The Land of Saddle-bags 


The reports from the Department of Health of 
the states concerned show an increasing number 
of similar clinics in which the state, the county, 
and private individuals are heartily cooperating. 

In some schools the Extension workers conduct 
a Farmers’ Tent Chautauqua in several adjoin- 
ing counties. The program lasts perhaps three 
days at each selected site. There are, of course, 
lectures on improved farming and improved 
schools. There are lectures also upon health, with 
an attractive exhibition of pictures and charts, 
and practical demonstrations by a uniformed 
nurse. Besides the general lectures, there are 
talks to women on the care of babies, maternity, 
and first aid in the sickness of children. 

The Health workers of the Extension service 
sometimes have a rest-tent at the County Fair, 
where exhibits, talks, and movies on health are 
alternated with attractive demonstrations show- 
ing how to cook simple and procurable dishes for 
the sick and convalescent. 

The County Teachers’ Institute offers a great 
opportunity. ‘To a well-equipped lecturer an 
hour on the program will gladly be given to pre- 
sent these matters of vital interest. Often an 
evening hour can be secured, and by tactful invi- 
tation the most influential people in the commu- 
nity may be gathered with the teachers to see and 
hear. 

On more than one occasion the writer has been 


Health and Happiness 217 


invited to lecture in the court-house when circuit 
court was in session and the county seat was 
therefore filled with people from all parts of the 
county. The judge would suspend the court pro- 
ceedings for an hour, and the crowd would always 
listen with eager attention. 

If representatives of National or State Health 
organizations should offer their services to the 
local authorities and workers, they would gen- 
erally be hospitably welcomed. The outsider that 
pushes in without reference to those that should 
be his hosts might as well save his time and travel. 

In addition to the various campaigns of infor- 
mation just mentioned, a good deal has been done 
both for information and remedy by various 
schools and by church boards, sometimes with the 
cooperation of the local community or some or- 
ganization therein, but frequently with merely 
passive non-resistance or curious observation. 
_ There are an increasing number of well-trained 
and experienced nurses settled on school grounds 
or at some convenient spot on the creek. These 
nurses usually have tiny hospitals in which they 
reside. When pupils are sick, they are removed 
to the hospital and, by observation and experi- 
ence, the patients get a new conception of what 
should be done for the sick. The nurse usually 
visits all the homes up and down the creek and 
helps with the babies and sick people. After they 
have learned to trust her, she enlists the generous 


218 The Land of Saddle-bags 


aid of physicians and surgeons from the nearest 
cities, and arranges clinics for the free treatment 
of serious cases that need expert attention. But 
these devoted women, scattered here and there, 
are merely showing what needs to be done in the 
Mountains. At this time the States and the Na- 
tion should arise and do the task. 


Wealth and Welfare 


Wealth and Welfare 


+s HEY was married this mornin’. 

Yes, they’ve got something to start 
on. He’s got a nag and some corn, and 
he’s got a bed, and she’s got a bed 0’ goose- 
feathers, and he’s been off at public works 
and yearned him a leetle money to git some 
tricks and fixin’s for the house. Of course 
hit ain’t what you’d call much, but hit’s a 
right smart for pore folks.” 


CHAPTER TEN 
Wealth and Welfare 


VERY Mountain problem, whatever other 
elements enter into it, is largely a rural 
problem. THighty-one per cent of the 

Mountain People are rural, that is, they live in 
places with a population of less than one thou- 
sand. In Virginia the rural population rises to 
eighty-three per cent, in Georgia to eighty-five 
per cent, in North Carolina to eighty-nine per 
cent, in Kentucky to more than ninety per cent 
of the total population of the Mountain area of 
the state. In North Carolina there are in the 
whole Mountain area only six places with more 
than one thousand population, in Kentucky only 
sixteen. 

When you see the word ‘‘rural,’’ what picture 
rises in your mind? A white farm house with 
green shutters standing in a yard with great elms. 
Clumps of roses, peonies, and irises among’ the 
lilacs and syringas. A garden with delicious 
vegetables. An orchard with golden peaches and 
red apples peeping through the leaves. A pair 
of bay horses in the spring wagon, ready to take 
the family to the concert in the near-by town. 
The hired man bringing in two great pails of 
foaming milk. The dining-room shining with 
glassware and silver, the pink-edged china on the 

221 


222 The Land of Saddle-bags 


snowy tablecloth, the fragrance of roast beef, 
pumpkin pies, coffee, and some kind of cake. 
After supper everybody bundles up, climbs into 
the spring wagon, and away they go to the rhyth- 
mic hoof-beats of the horses on the smooth road. 

But in the Mountains there is no spring wagon, 
no smooth road, often no road at all. Your pic- 
ture is of the suburbs; we are in the wilderness. 
The secret of the Mountain situation is that it is 
far off. The needs of the Mountain People are 
caused by their remoteness. For practical pur- 
poses they are five hundred miles from suitable 
tools and implements, more than that from the 
ordinary conveniences of life. If you go away on 
a fishing trip into the wilds of Maine or Michigan, 
you do without many things to which you are ac- 
customed. Yet you have with you an expensive 
and elaborate outfit selected with care. Often 
there is an experienced guide to stand between 
you and any real discomfort. Suppose you should 
lose your outfit and have to stay in the woods six 
months without any guide. Try to imagine your- 
self coping with that situation. 

May I once more remind my readers that the 
area we are discussing is not constant? The build- 
ing of a railway to a mining camp makes trans- 
portation possible to the narrow valleys through 
which it winds. This melts down the isolation, 
and before long, modern schools, ideas, com- 
modities, and, most of all, markets, become a 


Wealth and Welfare 223 


new element in the life of the people along the 
edge of the railroad. What we call progress be- 
gins to modify the ways, the homes, the wants, 
the pleasures, the outlook, and purposes of the 
people. They assimilate whatever comes in con- 
tact with them, and their own peculiarities are in 
turn merged into a composite, the characteristics 
of their pioneer inheritance combined with that of 
standardized Americans. As such modification 
slowly takes place, the area of the Land of Sad- 
dle-bags is gradually decreased. 

This gradual change in the homes and habits of 
the people is exactly the same sort of change that 
takes place, and always has taken place, in every 
developing country. Whether we begin with 
Abraham or King Alfred or Daniel Boone, we 
find much the same stages of development. First 
they are pioneers, skilful hunters, and hardy 
fighters, that wander about and camp wherever 
they find a place that is suitable and secure. 
Then they gradually cease to be nomadic and be- 
come settlers. They can scarcely be called farm- 
ers yet, but they build a rough house, fence a spot 
for the garden, and clear a small field for bread- 
grain. They are still hunters, trappers, and 
traders. They are not rooted to the soil, but re- 
main only a few years in one place, and then 
move on. They want elbow room and, as soon as 
others settle within a mile or two, they feel 
crowded and restless. | 


224 The Land of Saddle-bags 


While these restless neighbors turn their eyes 
to the wider spaces, those with the strongest 
home-making instincts remain, and these grad- 
ually develop from mere settlers into farmers. 
Common activities begin to emerge—a store, a 
blacksmith shop, a school, a local magistrate, rep- 
resenting the majesty of the law, an informal and 
irregular forum, where common interests are dis- 
cussed and decided. As a Mountain man shrewdly 
remarked, ‘‘Mixin’ larns both parties.’’ The 
amount of ‘‘mixing’’ that has been done deter- 
mines what stage of social progress any particu- 
lar district has reached. The interchange of ideas 
and the interweaving of activities tend to bring 
all sorts and conditions of men into a homogene- 
ous and united people. Only where such inter- 
change is interrupted or hindered do startling 
differences appear. ‘The obvious remedy is to 
clear out the obstructions from the channels of 
social and economic intercourse. 

This chapter describes the conditions in those 
districts where this clearing away of hindrances 
has not yet been done. 

The Mountain people are contemporary pio- 
neers, remote in the wilderness, living without any 
of the conveniences that you consider necessities 
of life. All their habits and activities are shaped 
by this isolation. Above all, their economic life 
is conditioned by it. 

A city employment bureau registers some hun- 


Wealth and Welfare WoO. 





dreds of occupations. In not a single one of these 
could a man earn a living in the Land of Saddle- 
bags. Stone cutter, mason, blacksmith, machinist, 
carpenter, wagon maker, wheelwright, veterinary, 
bee keeper, bridge builder, shingle maker, farmer, 
gardener, orchardist, cattleman, poultryman, 
hunter, fur-trapper, butcher, gunsmith, barber, 
dentist, undertaker, each of these the Mountain 
man must be upon occasion. None of these activi- 
ties, however, constitutes a regular trade or occu- 
pation on the part of the Mountain man. Hach 
is only the meeting of an emergency, an incidental 
part of the day’s work. In general, each man re- 
pairs his own plow or wagon, shoes his own horse, 
splits shingles, and roofs his own barn. Yet in 
every community, in the course of time, one or 
two tradesmen emerge. 

For ordinary farm laborers there is little de- 
mand, and, it should be added, as little disposi- 
tion. The urge for ownership is very strong, and 
the desire to manage for one’s self even stronger. 

There are, of course, in every community some 
men that are not yet settled in life, and a few who 
have been unfortunate in their finances. Some of 
these may be persuaded to do an occasional day’s 
work. Until recently they were paid, not in money, 
but in corn at gathering time—a bushel of corn for 
each day’s work, or in pork at hog-killing time— 
five pounds of meat for a day’s work. 

In the Land of Saddle-bags it is still true that 


226 The Land of Saddle-bags 


there is no economic independence for women. 
In conditions where every family group is a sep- 
arate unit, conducting within itself all the basic 
activities of life, there are very few ways by 
which a woman can earn a living, especially if she 
has grown up with no training for bold and origi- 
nal effort. Usually the first trade that opens for 
a woman is that of a household servant. Here 
such labor in the more prosperous homes is per- 
formed by orphans who have been ‘‘took to raise.”’ 
In a civilization where everybody is a neighbor of 
equal rank and social standing, the position of a 
domestic servant is anomalous and therefore 
rare. Dressmaking forms a negligible fraction of 
the community’s activities, like churning or bak- 
ing; each family does its own. Nursing, or mid- 
wifery, naturally falls to an occasional stalwart 
‘‘oranny-woman,’’ or to a resolute widow, for ex- 
perience is the only teacher. School teaching is 
merely a preparation for matrimony. Unless a 
young woman has a father unusually prosperous, 
she must get married. It is the only economic 
position open to her. There is nothing else to do. 
Kiven unmarried widows are rare. A few strong- 
minded widows, especially if their children are 
old enough to plow and hoe, have courage enough 
to undertake life without the support of another 
husband. 
Two thirds of the Mountain men own land. 
From this land they must get their living. In 


Wealth and Welfare BPs 


most cases it is largely covered with forest. But 
_ if accessible, it is a culled forest. On the banks of 
the rivers and on the ‘‘forks’’ and creeks, which 
have sufficient water to float away logs, the best 
timber was cut long ago. Later, as the price of 
timber increased, a swath of trees was cut farther 
back from the stream, extending as far as it 
would pay to haul the logs before floating them 
down. As the price of lumber rises, and the saw- 
mills pay more for logs, another swath still farther 
off may be cut. And on land already cut over, 
trees that were formerly rejected as not good 
enough, may now be cut for second-class lumber. 
Beyond this riparian area, there can be no lumber 
cut or sold until railways penetrate in search of 
coal, or until macadam roads are built. Wherever 
a railway has entered, sawmills have been set up, 
and the timber cut in all the area from which it 
pays to haul. With no roads, it is a comparatively 
narrow area. Well-built roadbeds would furnish 
arteries to take the timber from a limited distance 
on both sides of arailroad. Here and there a few 
miles of such road are being built. But so far as 
the Mountain People are concerned, lumbering has 
become merely incidental. They must now get 
their living from cultivating the land. 

Very little of their land is level enough for 
cultivation. They cannot earn a living by raising 
bulky crops like corn, hay, or wheat. By spending 
a few weeks in the saddle, one may see thousands 


228 The Land of Saddle-bags 


of Mountain farms none of which has as much as 
ten acres level enough for a mowing machine. 
Most of them have scarcely two or three. No 
corn planter, no riding cultivator, no wheat drill, 
none of the improved farm implements can be 
used. To think of people in such a situation 
competing with the Llinois corn belt or the vast 
wheat fields of Minnesota would be absurd. 

There is a very large acreage where even the 
turning plow cannot be used. A makeshift, called 
a ‘‘hillside turner,’’ is widely used, and the simple 
‘*bull-tongue’’ or shovel plow (occasionally the 
‘‘double-shovel’’) does what plowing is possible. 
On many a precipitous cornfield the hoe is the 
only implement used from first to last. The corn 
crop raised thus emphatically by hand is mani- 
festly not sufficient for the family income, even if 
sold in the highest market. But even if a bumper 
crop of thousands of bushels could be raised, 
there would be no way, short of an aeroplane, to 
get it to the market. People that really live off 
the Land of Saddle-bags must raise crops that 
can walk to market. 

In riding to and fro we meet a flock of two 
thousand turkeys, the charter members of which 
have been driven thirty miles. The buyers start 
with a dozen bought from a farmer’s wife, and 
buy up each succeeding flock along the road. The 
news travels, and at intersecting side-roads, he 
finds little flocks with their drivers, the boys and 








THE WARP AND WOOF OF MOUNTAIN ART 


In teaching weaving some of the Mountain schools are preventing 

the extinction of an old and honorable craft and encouraging a 

promising Mountain industry. Many girls are learning not only 

to card, spin, and weave the wool, but also to dye it, for most 

schools insist upon the use of home-made dyes. Patterns familiar 
to the Mountains are often of remarkable beauty. 





A CLASS IN CHEESE-MAKING 


A few schools have equipment sufficient for teaching scientific and 

practical cheese-making of a grade meeting commercial requirements. 

Such schools help a people who “cannot with their bare hands cope 
with a civilization armed to the teeth with machinery.” 


Wealth and Welfare 229 


girls who have raised and tended them in the hope 
of the money this peripatetic market would bring 
them. The gregarious instinct of the birds adds 
to the flock a good many that are not paid for. 

Here is a flock of sheep that has come seventy 
miles—very slowly, for sheep are not good travel- 
ers. Later we come upon several droves of hogs, 
some in fair condition, others gaunt as grey- 
hounds. Droves of cattle are not uncommon at 
almost any season. They are mostly yearlings or 
two-year-olds, the by-products of the milch cows 
kept by every Mountain family. The cattle buy- 
ers ride through the country at rather uncertain 
intervals and buy them up by ones and twos till © 
they gather a large enough drove. 

A few medicinal roots can be sold at the store, 
where a buyer comes perhaps once a year. Going 
‘‘sanging’’ (to dig wild ginseng) used to be a 
common and profitable recreation which brought 
one a good bit of money as well as a pleasant ram- 
ble in the open woods. But ginseng has been 
practically rooted out. Fur-bearing ‘‘varmints’’ 
are trapped during the winter, and their pelts 
when turned inside out and dried on stretchers, 
are a recognized medium of exchange at the store. 

Geese are very commonly kept, and their down, 
plucked several times during the summer, has a 
market-price at the store. Wherever a wheeled 
vehicle can go, there is a market for poultry. 
And these ‘‘hen-men’’ buy up the eggs and carry 


230 The Land of Saddle-bags 


them over unbelievably jolty roads to the railway. 

The egg-buying area is considerably enlarged 
by the women who, living miles from the store, 
clap the side-saddle upon the horse, and, with a 
large basket of eggs on one arm and the baby in 
the other, scramble up precipitous rocks or plunge 
down creek-beds that are half waterfall and half 
rapids, all of which are erroneously labeled roads. 

The main economic problems of the Mountains 
are better agriculture and transportation. The 
Mountain family must raise more valuable prod- 
ucts and must have assistance in building roads 
to get them to market. 

An intelligent and industrious Mountain family, 
no matter how isolated, can raise most of its ‘‘liv- 
ing.’’ It has a good garden, a flock of hens, two 
or three cows, an ancient sow followed like a pa- 
triarch by a litter of pigs, and a drove of shotes, 
a colony of geese, thirty or forty hives of bees, an 
apple orchard, a vein of coal at the kitchen door, a 
cool spring in the yard, and a flock of sheep up 
under the cliffs. With occasional rabbits, squir- 
rels, and partridges shot by the boys, such a 
family is independent and comfortable. With a 
very small money income, they are prosperous. 
But how to get that small money income! 

A great many try to get it by leaving home dur- 
ing the winter, or for several months in the sum- 
mer after the corn is ‘‘laid by’’ (cultivated for 
the last time). They get pretty good wages at 


Wealth and Welfare (231 





‘“public works.’’ But the only permanently suc- 
cessful place in which to raise the income is the 
home. 

The lean, leathery cattle must be replaced by 
pure-blooded animals of thriving and profitable 
breeds. It is not uncommon for cows to be out 
of doors all winter. In many places they find 
shelter under the cliffs, in the shallow caves or 
‘‘rock houses’’ that abound by natural formation. 
Sometimes the lee side of a hay-stack is their only 
refuge. Even when there is a barn or shed avail- 
able, its construction is frequently so loose that 
‘it strains out only the coarsest of the wind.’’ 
A primitive barn is quite commonly erected by 
building first a crib of logs. When it is six or 
eight feet high, four top logs twice as long as the 
rest are laid on. These form supports for the 
roof which thus extends not only over the crib but 
over a considerable space on all four sides of it. 
The ends of these long sills may be supported by 
posts. Sometimes this extra covered space is 
boarded up with split clapboards; often it is 
merely walled in with a fence of rails or left en- 
tirely open. Such a barn, when new, keeps off the 
rain and snow. But as the spaces between the 
logs are not chinked, it allows unrestricted venti- 
lation. 

The average cow gets some corn fodder and a 
few nubbins. She is left to get the rest of her 
sustenance from the scenery. In consequence, she 


232 The Land of Saddle-bags 


is thin and uninteresting; so is her milk. En- 
durance is the chief characteristic of such ani- 
mals. Cattle bred for other qualities—for beef, 
milk, quick growth, cheap fattening, or a great size 
—must have better shelter and better food. 

More skilful agriculture must somehow be 
taught. Improved forage crops, such as clovers 
and legumes, must be introduced. Better seed se- 
lection and manurial values must become familiar 
matters. Then, with the worn-out hillsides put 
into grass and forage, more stock and that of a 
better kind could be sent to market. 

I was visiting some time ago in a beautiful sec- 
tion of the Mountains where the people were un- 
usually prosperous and intelligent. They had 
good schools, good churches, good farms, com- 
fortable homes, good roads, and were sending a 
large number of their young people away to col- 
lege. The valleys were not so narrow as in many 
places, nor the slopes so steep, but that was 
scarcely sufficient to account for the unusual pros- 
perity. Had a different strain of people settled 
here? Or had some accident planted therein an 
agricultural genius? Or was the soil naturally 
so much richer that prosperity was the inevitable 
result? I spent some time investigating. Finally 
I found a clue. 

‘‘Twenty-three years ago, when I was married, 
there was not a house all up and down this creek 
as good as that one yonder,’’ This statement was 


Wealth and Welfare 283 


corroborated by unquestionable details. I at once 
set about finding out what had happened in the 
neighborhood about twenty-two years ago. After 
a good deal of questioning—because nobody had 
considered it significant—I discovered that a 
pure-bred shorthorn bull had been, rather acci- 
dentally, brought into the valley about that time. 
This was the unrecognized foundation of their 
prosperity. If we could put into every Mountain 
valley trusty breeds of beef cattle, fat hogs, and 
long-wooled sheep, the Mountain problem would 
solve itself. Or rather the Mountain people would 
solve it within twenty years. 

But there are other obstacles to improvement 
besides lack of knowledge and lack of money. 
Personal preferences are an effective barrier, es- 
pecially if the preferences are held with anything 
hke unanimity. Enormous areas in the Mountains 
are favorable for sheep. But most Mountain men 
will not part with their dogs. They would not 
accept a flock of sheep as a gift on condition that 
they give up their hounds. A lonely hunter’s af- 
fection for his dog is stronger than any economic 
considerations. A boy’s devotion to his dog is as 
unreasoning and wholesome. The Mountain man’s 
sentiment toward his hound partakes of both these 
feelings. This remnant of wilderness freedom left 
to him is dearer than mere money. He loves to 
run foxes, or bears, or even squirrels; and he 
will be loyal to what he loves at any cost. Hco- 


234 The Land of Saddle-bags 


nomic forces give him no concern. The laws of 
supply and demand stand no chance against the 
likes and dislikes of an unfettered life. 

But the pressure of more compact community 
life has produced changes in the Mountains as 
well as elsewhere. Here and there a man and his 
friends have started a creamery. These indus- 
tries are running successfully and are exerting a 
strong influence in their neighborhood for better 
cows, and better cows involve better feeding and 
care. In certain sections cheese factories have 
been the means of re-making the community. 
Making grape-juice is a feasible industry, for 
grapes are easily and successfully grown in most 
parts of the Mountains. 

These are exceedingly valuable means for eco- 
nomic betterment. They demand local coopera- 
tion, but not great capital nor great knowledge 
for their beginning. Best of all they contribute 
to the staple food supply of the nation. They do 
not depend upon a passing fashion. 

The economic problem of the Mountains is 
fundamental. Primarily it is a problem in agri- 
cultural education. With that in process of solu- 
tion we can with some hope work for good health, 
good schools, and good citizenship. 

But many of the slopes are too steep even for 
grass. Sod cannot develop fast enough to hold 
the soil from erosion. All steep slopes should 
be planted with trees. Reforestation should be 


Wealth and Welfare 2BB 





definitely encouraged, not merely by creating 
State and National Forest Reserves, but also by 
instruction and encouragement specially adapted 
to men that own small tracts of land and have lit- 
tle capital. They must be taught practical fores- 
try, not as it ought to be done ideally by a rich 
nation, but as it could be done by a poor hill- 
farmer. 

For this, as for every other improvement, there 
are no sufficient channels or media of communi- 
cation. A, campaign of newspaper information 
would reach a very small number. Newspapers 
are not very common, and many of the people are 
not ready readers. Besides, few newspapers give 
much useful information. Someone suggests a 
campaign of four-minute speakers. It would 
take these speakers two weeks to get to their 
appointments. Button-holing a million people 
is a considerable undertaking, especially when 
they live so far apart and in such remote and in- 
accessible places. 

But however difficult the task, the Nation owes 
it to the Mountain People, and to itself, to under- 
take whatever remedial measures are necessary. 

Of course when coal mines are opened or fac- 
tories are built, the whole economic situation is 
changed. Around the mines it is profitable to 
raise vegetables, eggs, and chickens, and in the 
factories women and even children are employed. 
There. is, of course, more money in circulation, 


236 The Land of Saddle-bags 


But no one that has made any study of social eco- 
nomics will be deluded into measuring prosperity 
by the bank transactions. From hunters to set- 
tlers, from settlers to agriculture, the social tran- 
sitions are great, but they are very gradual. The 
transition even from prosperous and businesslike 
farming to industrial life is always very abrupt. 
When the agricultural stage is omitted, the transi- 
tion from the rough, untrained farming of the set- 
tlers to the complex conditions of industrial life 
is a perilous leap. An epoch of industrial devel- 
opment is always fraught with grave danger to 
the ideals and morals of the community. There 
is subtle and serious danger in any expansion in 
which the whole ‘community does not actively 
share. 

The hazard is less when great industrial or- 
ganizations grow out of the community’s own in- 
ternal development. But there is unspeakable 
danger when manufacturing, mining, and other 
mass operations are thrust into a backward com- 
munity by outsiders. They are conducted not 
primarily in the community’s interest, but for the 
benefit of the exploiters. The Mountain People 
are suffering from the ruthless exploitation of 
large financial interests. These foreign jugger- 
nauts may have secured their coal and timber 
lands for a song, but taking money from those 
that have no special use for it is not a fatal dam- 
age. The deadly sin is the thrusting of a ferocious 


Wealth and Welfare 237, 





and devouring social system upon an unprepared 
and defenceless people. In spite of all our 
boasted modern progress, mining still remains 
the hideous, devilish operation depicted in Para- 
dise Lost. 

A Mountain man becomes a miner. He moves 
his family and a few household goods from the 
picturesque cabin in the cove or on the ridge to a 
desolate shack in the sordid village that has 
sprung up around the mine. He had not realized 
that he would have to buy all his food. A garden 
and cornfield had always seemed to him an insep- 
arable part of a house. His cow starves as she 
roams at large. Milk and butter had heretofore 
seemed almost a part of the landscape. He can 
keep no bees for the honey. There is no acorn or 
hickory mast for his hog, so he puts it in a pen 
and tries to feed it on table scraps. This encour- 
ages waste in the kitchen. He has to pay even 
for water to drink. The life of nature, of which 
he was a part, has been torn from hin, and, 
stripped naked of all he has been accustomed to, 
he might as well be in a dungeon. The vices of 
our industrial progress fasten their tentacles 
upon him and soon suck out his life. His children 
are surrounded by ugliness instead of beauty, 
their time is spent in idleness instead of the 
healthy-minded recreations of the woods and the 
educative family chores incident to tilling the soil. 

When the nation is in the throes of war, the au- 


238 The Land of Saddle-bags 


thorities are quick to assert the solidarity of the 
population. Every man, however remote, owes 
his service to the nation. But when the danger is 
past, they quickly forget what is equally true, 
that the nation on its part owes a duty to every 
member. If all the people must equally care for 
the nation in danger, the nation must care for all 
its people in peace. The nation has never done 
its duty to those that have neither the power nor 
the skill to compel it. It has left them to do what 
they could for themselves. The nation owes educa- 
tion, communication, and transportation to all its 
people alike. If the nation had done its duty in 
education alone, the Mountain People would have 
been ready for the industrial invasion. Indeed, 
they would have forestalled the invasion by their 
own industrial development. But with meager 
facilities for education, communication, and 
transportation, development has been difficult, and 
a self-respecting solidarity impossible. For the 
Mountain People, compact geographically, are 
scattered politically into the helpless minorities 
of eight different states. Even if their thinking 
and planning were articulate, they would have no 
effective means to express their thought in politi- 
cal action. 


The Challenge 


The Challenge 


T is this transition that should make 

the challenge to the Churches today. A 
people who for generations have worked 
out their individual existence far removed 
from the forward march of progress is 
bound to suffer temporary demoralization 
when modern industrial conditions change 
their whole manner of life. 

The Mountains need today new leaders 
who are willing to face new conditions. 
There are modern problems to be met. 
The imperative need, and we must not de- 
lay, is to develop leaders among the peo- 
ple themselves, that they may direct all 
the forces—economic, educational, social, 
agricultural, and religious—to cooperate 
in shaping an ideal, wholesome, Christian, 
community life. 


HELEN H. DINGMAN 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 
The Challenge 


HATEVER is done for the Mountains 

should be done at once. The industrial 

invasion dispossesses the people, breaks 
down their old standards and usages, and grinds 
them down into a poverty not only of purse but 
of living, which their free and leisurely existence 
heretofore has peculiarly unfitted them to survive. 
But whatever is done, they must do for them- 
selves; it cannot be done for them; a regrettable 
number of the two hundred educational enter- 
prises started in the Mountains by earnest and 
kindly people have failed or have had only frag- 
ments of success because the benefactors have, 
with generous impulses, given too muci and done 
too much for the people. It is almost cruel to 
hint to such devoted workers that they have de- 
prived the people of a God-given right, one of the 
inherent rights of humanity, the right of self- 
help. No race or nation has ever been lifted to a 
higher level. It needs the stimulus of an outside 
civilization, the contact with a people of more ad- 
vanced socialization; but it must climb by its own 
efforts. Unless it responds to the outside sugges- 
tion and stimulus by the exertion of its own 
energy, any apparent improvement is only a rope 


cf sand, 
241 


242 The Land of Saddle-bags 


Further, we ought to recognize that the law of 
progress demands self-direction. The problem 
before all these agencies is how to assist the 
Mountain People to self-help and self-direction. 
Long-distance instruction must give way to object 
lessons and to personal suggestions given by 
neighborly people who know the conditions inti- 
mately and who really respect their less experi- 
enced neighbors. 

Of course educators in the Mountains are no 
greater sinners in this respect than are the ma- 
jority of teachers in other places. But we must 
learn to do less telling and more encouraging, less 
directing and more sharing. 

The Mountains have suffered, of course, from 
the ruthless exploitation of industrial magnates 
who have bought up priceless coal lands, paying 
sometimes as low as fifty cents an acre. They 
have suffered also from an innocent and very 
kindly exploitation by literary folk who have con- 
sidered them an immense reservoir of quaint and 
original material for interesting stories—an un- 
failing resource for a long time to come. Writers, 
mission boards, and educators have all too easily 
assumed that conditions in the Mountains are 
static. Because these people isolated on this in- 
accessible island of mountains have remained in 
practically the same condition, socially, educa- 
tionally, and economically ever since the days of 
Daniel Boone and George Washington, it has 


The Challenge 243 


seemed probable that they would remain in that 
condition for another century. But they have not. 

Communication with the outside world has 
opened up. Railways have been built for coal. 
Water power has been developed for factories. 
The isolation is broken. These surviving pioneers 
have been startled out of their wilderness privacy. 
The currents of the world’s activities are already 
surging inupon them. They must learn quickly to 
navigate in these contending currents, or they 
will be swept away,—all but the few strong swim- 
mers that would survive in any waters. 

Their fathers and grandfathers have lived in 
their seclusion a life of idyllic leisure. If they 
had no books, few schools, and fewer comforts or 
conveniences, they did not greatly miss them. 
They were equal to all the demands that the sim- 
ple wilderness life made upon them. But their 
successors today, with only their fathers’ meager 
equipment, are not at all equal to the demands of 
the complex civilization now rushing upon them. 

They have already suffered sorely in the ways 
of the world from the severe pressure of a gigantic 
and complicated social machinery at which they 
gazed in childlike wonder. They were not even 
afraid. They did not know it would devour them. 
So they were deprived of their timber, coal, and oil 
lands. Legally, of course, quite legally! It was as 
easy as stealing candy from a baby. 

Unless their conscientious fellow citizens can 


244 The Land of Saddle-bags 


recognize the sudden tide that has swept in upon 
them, they will be overwhelmed. All the forces of 
uplift, of enlightenment, of succor, must give in- 
stant and energetic help, or they will become 
hewers ot wood and drawers of water. They can- 
not with their bare hands cope with a civilization 
armed to the teeth with machinery. How can 
Daniel Boone, notwithstanding his personal charm 
and gentle wisdom, compete with the scientific in- 
ventiveness of Kidison, or the organizing shrewd- 
ness of Rockefeller? Unsympathizing lawyers 
snatched Boone’s lands from him again and again 
and finally drove him across the Mississippi into 
Spanish territory. Is a similar disgrace to be 
perpetrated upon his descendants today? They 
must be counselled and assisted by wise and dis- 
interested leadership. They must be hastily pre- 
pared to meet the emergency that has burst in 
upon them and taken them by surprise. The edu- 
cational process must be speeded up. 

Perhaps the greatest possible help is friendly 
counsel. This cannot be issued to them in a gov- 
ernment bulletin. It must come through personal 
and prolonged contact with those in whom they 
have learned to have confidence. They have, un- 
fortunately, learned that most outsiders pene- 
trating into the Mountains are looking out for 
their own selfish interests. 

During recent years there has been a notable 
change, or at least the beginning of a change in 


The Challenge 245 





meeting this inarticulate need. The most alert 
and forward-looking workers of various church 
boards, together with some independent workers, 
have started various kinds of community work. 
All of these centers and the people that man them 
are presumably working on the same general plan. 
Their fundamental purpose is not to do things for 
the community, much less to compete with other 
helpful agencies. Their aim is rather to link up 
the community with all the existing agencies; to 
give expert counsel so that the community shall 
not let its opportunities slip; to help it catch step 
with the available movements for betterment: the 
state board of education, its promoters and super- 
visors; the state university and its extension 
workers; the agricultural experiment station and 
its traveling advisers; the state board of health 
and its campaign of cooperation; national organi- 
zations offering help in district nursing, health 
teaching, clinics for hookworm, trachoma, tuber- 
culosis, care of teeth, care of babies; thrift cam- 
paigns, credit unions, and many others.* 

We make here brief mention of a few instances 
of community work that might well be taken as 


1 American Child Health Association, American Red Cross, 
Credit Union National Extension Bureau, Daughters of the Ameri- 
can Revolution, National Education Association, National Organi- 
gation for Public Health Nursing, Pi Beta Phi Fraternity, Rocke- 
feller Sanitary Commission, Russell Sage Foundation, Southern 
Industrial Educational Association, State Federation of Women’s 
Clubs, U. S. Departments of Agriculture, Education, Health, 
Children’s Bureau, Young Men’s Christian Association, Young 
Women’s Christian Association. 


246 The Land of Saddle-bags 


patterns by all those trying to help the Mountain 
People solve their problem. The kind of work 
that should be undertaken depends partly upon the 
community under consideration, partly upon the 
finances available, and largely upon the personal- 
ity and resourcefulness of the worker that under- 
takes it. 

Here is a comfortable log cabin built midway 
between two district schoolhouses, one a mile and 
e, half up the creek, the other as far below. Be- 
sides the two women that teach these schools— 
and that are paid by the public school fund—there 
is a housekeeper who also lives in the cabin. In 
addition to caring for the teachers she is a 
friendly visitor and counsellor in all the homes. 
She conducts a class for girls in sewing and, dur- 
ing the summer, in canning. As she becomes ac- 
quainted, she gives informal instruction to 
mothers in the care of children, sanitation, home 
nursing, and diet for the sick. Her support, of 
course, comes from outside sources. 

Here is a similar log cabin with an extra room 
or two. This is the headquarters of a nurse, and 
the extra rooms are her tiny hospital. They are 
supplied with whatever conveniences the situation 
permits. Serious cases that need skilful nursing 
are brought here. The nurse visits the homes in 
_the whole neighborhood, helping in sickness, 
dressing wounds, suggesting diet, and encour- 
aging better sanitation. She cooperates loyally 


The Challenge 247 


with the local physician (if the term local can be 
applied to a doctor living fifteen miles away). 
In some cases there is a medical woman, a licensed 
physician, as well as a nurse, living in the hospi- 
tal. The teachers of the adjacent district schools 
may live there also. Various combinations are 
obviously possible. A leader of recreation some- 
times resides in one of these settlements. Such 
a worker is of especial value where many families 
have gathered about a mine or a factory. 

Very valuable assistance is given by volunteer 
workers in supervising a number of district 
schools in one corner of the county. A wise ex- 
pert, by studying the different problems of each 
district teacher and by sympathetic understand- 
ing of each teacher’s personality, can help a 
group of teachers to accomplish wonders in their 
own work with the pupils and in their influence 
over the communities in getting everybody to 
work together for a better school. After such 
volunteer supervisors have for a year or two 
given this valuable help to the public schools, the 
county in most cases will be glad to assume the 
burden of its support. 

The work that most of the church boards have 
undertaken in the Mountains has naturally been 
schools and in many cases a school was the only 
open door to a community. In any case, it has 
carried the most immediate appeal; for who could 
resist helping the children? It gave also the 


248 The Land of Saddle-bags 


quickest results, for children can be molded more 
readily than adults. 

Here is an orphanage, undertaken in the belief 
that most rapid progress can be made when chil- 
dren are taken completely out of their original 
surroundings and transplanted into a completely 
new environment. 

Other workers with similar convictions estab- 
lish boarding schools, so that they may be able to 
influence the children twenty-four hours a day. 
They accept no pupils that live at home and re- 
quire all to remain on the school grounds except 
for occasional visits home over stated Sundays. 

It is a temptation to all educators to draw apart 
from the community and build an invisible cloister 
wall around himself and his pupils. He has con- 
stantly to correct the bread-and-butter emphasis 
which slights the invisible and intellectual in 
favor of material values. In counteracting and 
correcting this, he sometimes minimizes the legiti- 
mate value of practical affairs. In protecting 
his school from the control of mere earning ca- 
pacity, he frequently releases the community from 
its responsibility for the moral and financial sup- 
port of the school that they ought to carry. 

In the beginning, with no adequate school on 
the horizon, it was doubtless necessary to estab- 
lish some schools without waiting for the coopera- 
tion of the community. But as soon as the people 
got a taste of education, more and more responsi- 


The Challenge 249 





bility should have been placed upon them. If a 
community is not enlisted in the work of the 
school, it will come to look upon it as a ‘‘pork 
barrel,’’ a source of revenue to be shrewdly 
tapped whenever occasion offers. <A school that 
has not won the moral and financial support of 
the community is a failure, even though many in- 
dividual pupils have received great benefit. If 
the community cannot supply all the money to 
carry on a school, it should supply all it can. By 
its maximum contribution of money, and perhaps 
still more by regular consultation and advice 
about the actual administration of the school, the 
community must take its share of the responsibil- 
ity and give its moral and spiritual support to the 
whole work of the school. 

The most pressing educational need is for ele- 
mentary instruction that is practical enough and 
ideal enough for mature minds. The schools 
operating under the Smith-Hughes bill are a step 
suggesting the right direction. 

Studies must be chosen that are seen to have a 
direct connection with life as viewed by the pupil. 
And they must be taught in such a way that, with 
every effort he makes, the student achieves a 
recognizable progress in the art of living. 

The constant aim of the instructor should be 
to help the pupil acquire the power to make 
things. To attain creative power is the end of all 
education, whether it be ability to make a rabbit 


250 The Land of Saddle-bags 


trap or to compose an oratorio. For this reason 
there should be intelligent and enthusiastic guid- 
ance in hand work iw the elementary grades. The 
average age of pupils in the Mountain schools is 
much older than elsewhere. Boys and girls of 
fifteen are common in the fourth grade. For this 
reason, schools should be equipped to teach boys 
and girls the use of all sorts of tools and the man- 
agement and control of all sorts of processes. 
These should include sewing and woodworking, 
drawing and basketry, cooking and weaving, the 
rudiments of gardening, farming, and domestic 
architecture. 

Between twenty and thirty million dollars a 
year is given for higher education in the United 
States. Is there no far-seeing philanthropist who 
will give a few millions for carefully directed 
elementary or secondary education? There is no 
finer field for experimentation than the virgin 
spaces of Appalachia. 

How fascinating to build such a school far back 
in the mountains, perhaps ten miles from even a 
lumber railway. The buildings, whether of stone, 
or logs, or sawed lumber, should be rustic rather 
than citified. They should have all suitable con- 
veniences, of course. Most of all they should be 
beautiful; everything about them should be in 
harmony with the wilderness setting. 

A stone dam three hundred feet up the moun- 
tain side would gather water for the kitchen, 


The Challenge 251 








dormitories, and barn. <A turbine in the main 
pipe would furnish electric light. The overflow 
would provide a swimming pool. 

There should be a practical agricultural depart- 
ment, with a model garden in the richest level 
spot. This would furnish all the vegetables the 
kitchen could use, fresh and canned, and would 
also afford some little plots for the individual ex- 
periments of various classes learning to grow 
vegetables. The site chosen should include a good 
meadow level enough for a mowing machine, rich 
bottom land for corn, gentle slopes for pasture, 
and an acre or so for fruit trees and grape vines. 
A coal mine in the mountain and plenty of timber 
on it should not be overlooked. A model barn 
would house the animals and their feed. It is 
important that there should be a construction de- 
partment whose director would teach the boys 
(and neighbors) simple carpentry, blacksmith 
work, stone cutting and masonry, pipe fitting and 
painting. There should, of course, be a depart- 
ment of household arts to teach the girls cooking, 
weaving, nursing, gardening, and the making of 
furniture. Equally important would be super- 
vised recreation, outdoor games, the playing of 
some musical instrument, drawing, singing, danc- 
ing, dramatization, woodcraft, including a knowl- 
edge of flowers, trees, and birds. 

At one edge of the school grounds would stand 
a little hospital with a dozen beds and—a nurse, 


oe The Land of Saddle-bags 


She would give instruction in cleanliness, sanita- 
tion, diet, health habits, first aid, and home nurs- 
ing. In the community she would conduct individ- 
ual clinics in the care of babies, and give instruc- 
tion in the nourishing of children, school lunches, 
and diet for convalescents. Possibly, by furnish- 
ing suitable quarters, a physician might be se- 
cured to reside there. 

Cottages should be built instead of large dormi- 
tories. Attempts made anywhere to educate on a 
wholesale scale are too often malpractice; it is al- 
ways so in the Mountains. 

Much use should be made of a library. Books, 
magazines, framed pictures, farmers’ bulletins, 
should be circulated in the community as well as 
among the pupils. A debating club should be en- 
couraged for young men not in school, and a 
farmers’ meeting held, perhaps, on Saturday eve- 
nings. A recognized part of the program should 
be ‘‘continuation classes’’ to give the people of 
the community what they want—whether it be 
plumbing or poetry, road-building or Rembrandt. 

The school curriculum should cover not more 
than four years—let us say from the ninth 
through the twelfth grade. At first there would 
doubtless need to be a coach class for those weak 
in the eighth grade, but it is usually unwise to in- 
clude too great diversity of work or of pupils in 
one school. Four years is a broad enough unit. 
What shall the boys and girls study? Language, 


The Challenge woo 





literature, history, mathematics (including sim- 
plified surveying, levelling, mechanics, and the 
elements of road engineering), the foundations of 
science, and in the last year some sociology and 
pedagogy. The aim of the school being to build 
citizenship, it should develop men and women 
with the habit of thinking, with skill to do, and 
with the ability to live together in free and help- 
ful community life. 

It would be difficult to find teachers and work- 
ers with enough breadth, energy, and initiative to 
carry on work so different from the conventional 
schools in which most of us grew up. The worker 
must be practical and resourceful, or he could not 
successfully meet the severe conditions of the 
isolated life. He must be able to stand alone, and 
yet work readily with others. He must be keen, 
yet kindly, with fraternal tact and abundant com- 
mon sense. He should be spiritual rather than 
pious, sensitive to the presence of God rather 
than valiant in defending the faith. A man that 
appreciates beauty in the rough and sees possibili- 
ties that are not yet visible! No man of mediocre 
ability, conventional in mind and morals, should 
be sent to the Mountains, no matter how willing 
or zealous he be for service. Send only those that 
can discriminate between what is essential and 
what is incidental in our modern civilization; men 
with insight to interpret the great movements of 
the past and to discern in the present cross-cur- 


254 The Land of Saddle-bags 


rents the direction of the great movements of the 
future. 

They must be men and women that know the 
Mountain People, their history, their environ- 
ment, their aspirations; men and women so 
well acquainted with Mountain life that they do 
not mistake for essential features the accidental 
peculiarities or oddities that catch the attention 
of the casual visitor. They must be people with 
understanding sympathy, with a genuine sense of 
kinship, with fellow-feeling—not sentimentality. 

Men too erude for the city will fail here. The 
situation demands men and women of culture, 
who enjoy the world’s best; men and women with 
deep appreciation of beauty in painting, music, 
architecture, and poetry; men and women with 
vivid social sense, and a vital interest in the up- 
heavings of democracy, with a moral passion for 
righteousness coupled with invincible patience 
and unbreakable hopefulness. Only such can help 
the Mountain People to enter into their belated 
heritage. 

Scattered here and there are notable examples 
of cooperation in some community betterment. 
Usually such cooperation is the outgrowth of the 
community’s confidence in one person; confidence 
in his (or frequently her) integrity, in his prac- 
tical judgment, in his understanding sympathy, 
to which they bear glad witness, by saying ‘‘he’s 
a mighty common man.”’ 


The Challenge 256 


There are many cases of a school being so for- 
tunate as to have secured a succession of wise, 
friendly, devoted workers. Such an institution 
wins the confidence of a wide scope of territory. 
Its reputation and influence extend far beyond 
the range of personal acquaintance. If it can con- 
stantly obtain a succession of new workers of per- 
sistent friendliness and intelligent neighborliness, 
its beneficent influence will continue widespread. 
To secure and develop such workers is difficult, 
and most schools fall away from their primitive 
neighborliness and become institutionalized and 
dehumanized. But so far and so long as the 
worker’s interest is genuine, unselfish, and deep, 
the community will trust him and follow his lead- 
ing if he have the ability to lead. 

One of the most hopeful projects for community 
betterment has recently been launched by one of 
the larger schools. To give an initial impetus it 
secured from a friend two prizes, one of three 
thousand, and one of two thousand dollars, to be 
awarded to the counties making most progress in 
eighteen months. It issued a pamphlet of instruc- 
tions and the system of grading for the contest, 
and sent its workers to assist in organizing the 
competing counties. Expecting to enroll three or 
four, it has finally admitted ten counties. 

A county competing may improve along ten 
lines, gaining the following points: schools, two 
thousand points; health and sanitation, one thou- 


256 The Land of Saddle-bags 


sand; home and farm, one thousand; church and 
Sunday school, one thousand; agriculture and 
livestock, one thousand; community clubs, five 
hundred; boys’ and girls’ clubs, one thousand; 
roads and public buildings, one thousand; news- 
papers and magazines, five hundred; and social 
work, one thousand. 

Hearty cooperation is given by the State De- 
partment of Education, the State Board of 
Health, the State Agricultural College, the Na- 
tional Red Cross, and other organizations. 

No county can enter the contest until an agree- 
ment to push improvement is signed by the 
County Judge and the Fiscal Court, the County 
Health officer, the Board of Education, the county 
farm agent and a committee of representative 
ministers. The school’s Extension Committee 
acts as a clearing house to get the local officials in 
touch with the state or national forces that make 
for progress. 

Each county is surveyed and its standing in 
the ten departments evaluated at the beginning 
of the contest. From this, its progress during 
the eighteen months’ duration of the contest is 
measured. For instance, under ‘‘Schools’’ three 
hundred points can be made by improved at- 
tendance, points for employing teachers with 
high school, normal school, or college training, 
points for increasing teachers’ salaries, points for 
new school buildings or equipment, 


The Challenge Leto, 


Under Health and Sanitation a ‘‘standard 
store’’ is defined as a store having fly screens on 
doors and windows, food protected against dust 
and flies, no spittoons, and no spitting on floor, 
facilities for clerks to wash their hands frequently, 
and floors oiled at least four times a year. Stand- 
ards set for post offices, court houses, railroad 
stations and other public buildings will educate 
the public. People that are hopelessly indif- 
ferent to these ideals will do considerable to beat 
an adjoining county. Under school sanitation, 
points are given for medical inspection of indi- 
vidual schools and for supervised play. 

Improvements in homes include the painting 
of houses or barns, installing kitchen sinks, water 
in the house, refrigerators, separators, washing 
machines, sewing machines, sewing and weaving, 
sheds for machinery, cellars, and new fences. A 
‘‘standard home’’ must have safe drainage, not 
less than three rooms for two people, one room 
more for each additional two, doors and windows 
screened, water (pronounced safe by State Board 
of Health) within ten yards of the kitchen door, a 
sanitary outhouse, and a yard free from rubbish 
and weeds. Points are assigned for better stock, 
sheep, hogs, cattle, and poultry, for vaccination 
and inoculation, for planting fruit trees, and im- 
proving gardens, for putting in tile drains, sow- 
ing legumes, testing seed, or producing eggs in 
quantity. 


258 The Land of Saddle-bags 


In most cases the chairmen of these ten de- 
partments are the officials naturally in charge: 
the county superintendent of schools, the county 
health officer of sanitation, the county agent of 
farm improvement and boys’ clubs, the county 
home demonstration agent of homes and girls’ 
clubs, the fiscal court of roads, and an elected com- 
mittee representing the churches. Under the 
stimulus of the contest these officials learn better 
how to do their work, the people eagerly support 
them, and efficiency almost becomes a habit. 
County nurses, farm agents, home demonstration 
agents, are appointed. Bond issues are voted to 
build roads, Sunday schools are organized, and 
new churches are built. 

Contesting counties that do not win the money 
prize will win a greater prize in the experience of 
working together to reach a higher standard in 
many departments that make rural life better. 

There is great opportunity in the Mountains for 
helpers that have the Pauline ability to earn their 
own living more or less incidentally. A doctor 
that is not afraid of pioneer conditions can go into 
the Land of Saddle-bags and earn his living. 
Any sort of general tradesman, if he have initia- 
twe, can earn his own expenses without the sup- 
port of a church board, and by brotherly living he 
can leaven the neighborhood for cooperative and 
community betterment. 

There is one consideration that has been largely 


The Challenge 259 


overlooked by those literary folk that have writ- 
ten about the Mountain People. I refer to the 
emigration from the Mountains. This was of two 
kinds. In the earlier days, as has been noted in 
Chapter Three, there was a definite movement of 
population, an observable stream of migration. 
This flowed from western Pennsylvania down the 
valley of Virginia to Carolina. There it turned 
westward through Tennessee and at Cumberland 
Gap poured into Kentucky. This stream flowed 
along certain channels, and, as is the way with 
full, strong-moving, swollen streams, there was 
considerable splashing over the edges, and some- 
times distinct little rivulets trickled through the 
banks. Thus many families were separated from 
the main stream and settled on either side all 
along its way. The farther the migration flowed, 
the more strongly its waters washed over the 
banks, so that in the southwest, the population at 
the foot of the mountains was very largely im- 
pregnated by the stream of commingled Scotch- 
Irish, Virginia English, Palatine German and 
French Huguenot, the main stream of which be- 
came the Appalachian population that we call the 
Mountain People. Thus James Robertson flowed 
off to Nashville, Abraham Lincoln’s father was 
washed into the foothills of Kentucky (Abraham 
was born in Hardin County) and drifted thence 
to Indiana and Illinois. Daniel Boone and sev- 
eral of his sons were borne on a stronger current 


260 The Land of Saddle-bags 


into the Spanish possessions of Missouri. Davy 
Crockett and Sam Houston were swept as far as 
Texas. 

Such currents of migration represented by the 
well-known men mentioned spread over the moun- 
tains and overflowed the adjacent areas, leaving 
a rich deposit of valiant pioneer manhood. 

The straight-grained, hardy, wholesome-minded 
mountain stock has, therefore, already con- 
tributed largely to the nation of its sterling 
Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Celtic qualities. 

The second kind of emigration referred to is 
individual. True to the original exploring type, 
strong-minded and venturesome men have con- 
tinually left the Mountains and gone out to try 
their fortunes in other places. Numberless young 
Lincolns have built their lives into towns and vil- 
lages all over the nation and have enriched the 
community life with their homespun virtues and 
rugged strength. 

Out of this mountain reservoir can be drawn a 
constant stream of vigorous native manhood and 
charmingly simple womanhood, fresh, unjaded, 
unspoiled, and in the deepest sense, American. 
American in language, ideals and_ religion. 
American in their love of freedom. American in 
their fearlessness of the future. American in 
their resourcefulness and adaptability. Ameri- 
can most of all, perhaps, in their unspoiled neigh- 
borliness and hospitality. 


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